


Hawke & Hawke, Paranormal Investigators

by mysterycultist



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ghost Hunters, Humor, Multi, Paranormal Investigators, Twin Hawkes, a haunting whodunnit, magic is fake but magic is real
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6159433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterycultist/pseuds/mysterycultist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris's roommate is convinced that their apartment is haunted. Letting the "Premier Ghost Hunters in Kirkwall, FL since 2011" and their extended family into his home was bad enough, but becoming a suspect is more than Fenris is willing to take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Phantom Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> The violence warning is for some really mild blood in the second chapter and some object-throwing, there really shouldn't be anything else to worry about. This is a Very Silly Fanfiction.

Of course Fenris hated his roommate from the second he laid eyes on him. He has a ponytail and wears oxfords without socks as a fashion statement; when Fenris came over to look at the apartment, he hit him on the arm buddy-buddy style and said he was “really into that Elton John thing you’re doing, with the hair and the get-up. Fuck the world, they don’t get to see the real you, right? And those tattoos! Wow!” Of course Fenris fucking despises him.

But rent was four hundred dollars, it was close to the bar and the college, and Fenris was running out of options. He’d been in a Motel 6 for two weeks, and he wasn’t going to start classes with that as his address. And Anders is a med student, so he wasn’t supposed to be around much—Aside from the cat, it didn’t seem too unbearable.

And that’s where this all began, in fact: the cat. The cat with the name so stupid, Fenris only calls or thinks of it as “the cat,” occasionally “felis catus,” but only ever the Latin when he’s been drinking because otherwise, he can tell that it’s not funny, it’s vapid and pretentious. Fenris is allergic to that cat, but Anders doesn’t know it. Anders thinks that Fenris’s eyes are red and watery every time they see each other in the kitchen because Fenris is just constantly consuming marijuana, and Anders reacts to this by leaving anti-smoking and “Above the Influence” pamphlets on the coffee table for Fenris to find when he wakes up at noon every day, not because of his hard-partying lifestyle, but because he has a night job.

No, Anders, it’s not the smoke inhalation that’s destroying Fenris’s health. It’s your long-haired tabby shedding on every fucking thing he owns.

It goes on for weeks before Anders knocks on the door to Fenris’s room, lets himself in, and says, hand on hip, “Look, what you do to your body is your business, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d just, like, restrain yourself from smoking _cigars_ inside where I have to breathe it.”

Fenris is on his mattress, on the floor, reading _My Antonia_ for the third time. The book is propped against his crossed legs, and he looks up from it, but he doesn’t put it down. “I don’t smoke.”

Anders rolls his eyes. “Please. My father was a cigar man, I can recognize the smell.”

“Maybe your father’s been breaking into the apartment and smoking, because it definitely isn’t me.”

Anders curls his lip and goes in to bitch more, _How fucking dare you_ et cetera, and then suddenly cuts himself off, overcome with a distant look. Slowly, he raises a hand to his mouth.

“You know…” he says.

“No,” Fenris says.

That he ignores this is a measure of Anders’s distraction. “You know?” he repeats. “Have you heard, like… Footsteps? Like, when you’re alone… Like, boots? Walking around?”

“All the floors are tile and you have the cat.”

“No, no, not like that.” He shakes his head, chewing at his thumbnail. “Sir Pounce has little padded feet. He has a sweet little pitter-patter, I mean—“ He stamps his foot down three times.

Fenris shakes his head; Anders hums anxiously to himself and wanders away.

The door had been left unlocked as a gesture of good faith, because it’d been a few weeks since Anders last touched it. It was never, ever left unlocked again.

So an hour later, when Anders comes back to ask if Fenris felt that _sudden chill,_ he’s left knocking frantically and rattling the knob.

If Fenris was under the impression that medical doctors were, out of career necessity if nothing else, essentially logical people, he’s smartly corrected over the following week.

He’s sitting on the couch, which is upholstered more with cat hair than with corduroy, calmly telling his roommate that not only is there no way he’s going to split the bill for the “paranormal investigators” Anders is so bent on hiring, there no way in hell he’s letting these scam artists into his place of residence.

“You know, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but—“ Anders halts his pacing to point one accusing finger at him, biting down on his lip as if, even on the brink of bringing it up, he’s trying to stop himself from bringing it up. “ _None_ of this started until you moved in.”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“Didn’t you say you bought all your furniture at the Goodwill superstore on I-75? Isn’t that where they send dead old womens’ dolls and deathbeds when they gut their houses?”

“You think my writing desk is haunted?”

“Just be honest with me—Have you been dabbling with ouija? Tarot? _Summoning sciences?”_

Fenris slams the door before locking it, and that _bang_ is echoed by the _bang_ of Fenris’s coffee cup picking up off the floor and flying into the wall.

Coincidence.

He sits down at his desk chair, which he bought at the Goodwill superstore on I-75 the day he moved in—it’s arms are wrapped in blue duct tape for reasons he can’t imagine, but otherwise it is completely normal—flicks on the lamp, and sets the business card Anders gave him at dead center on the clear desk top.

HAWKE & HAWKE

_Paranormal Investigators, Metaphysical Consultants_

_~~555-555-5555~~ ~ hawkeinvestigators@kirkwall.net ~ 6333 Hightown Blvd_

SOLVING KIRKWALL, FL’S MOST DANGEROUS HAUNTINGS SINCE 2011 C.E. SPIRITS, POLTERGEISTS, DEMONIC POSSESSION AND MORE! WE PROVIDE ANSWERS FOR YOUR PEACE OF MIND. CALL FOR MORE INFORMATION & ESTIMATES, OR ASK FOR GARRETT AT KIRKWALL PRO KARATE.

*** _We are a Ouija-Free group!***_

The phone number at the top has been blacked out with sharpie. Fenris imagines that 2016 C.E. has not been a profitable year for Hawke & Hawke.

Fenris has been sitting there, swiveling and considering the card, carving idle designs into the desk’s dark finish with the pocket knife he bought at a Salvation Army Family Store in Raleigh, for no more than an hour when he hears the doorbell.

And the doorbell, and the doorbell, and the doorbell again five minutes later. Stepping into the hall, he hears the shower running and a Jackson Browne album blaring at full volume, Anders accompanying in a passionate tenor.

Fenris can see two people through the peephole: a man and a woman, the woman rolling her eyes while the man chatters brightly. When he opens the door, there are three: the man, the woman, and a man whose ponytail is level with Fenris’s waist. The short man has a camera trained on Fenris the second he comes into view.

“Hey there,” the tall man says, sticking his hand out for Fenris to shake. When Fenris remains motionless, he rescinds the offer and continues, nonplussed and rapid-fire. “I know we didn’t give you much time to reply to our email, but you said ‘e _mergency!’_ So I read ‘ _right now!_ ’ Hope this isn’t a bad time, and do you mind the camera? My dear friend here, love of my life, he’s a very famous author, yeah? Mr Varric Tethras, you’ve heard of him? He’s just collecting some footage, you won’t even notice—“

“Who are you?”

A half-second pause: he blinks, not bothering to close his mouth, and the woman sighs.

“We’re Hawke and—“

He cuts her off. “—Hawke, Paranormal Investigators. I’m Garrett, this is my talented sister, Bethany. You’re Anders, right?”

“No,” Fenris says, and closes the door.

A deep, rumbling laugh rises in the hall, and Fenris hears what must be Mr Tethras tell Hawke and Hawke that they have to get that guy to sign the release form, because he got that on tape and it’s going in the final cut.

“Wait,” the woman says, muffled. “Is our client’s name _Anders?_ You didn’t tell me that, Garrett, I—I really can’t be here, I—“

He hushes her. “Wait, let me try again.”

Fenris doesn’t process this in time to jump back from the door, where his ear is pressed, and the _knock, knock, knock!_ leaves his head ringing.

Just then, the last notes of “Doctor My Eyes” trail away and the shower shuts off.

Depending on whether Anders checks his email before or after putting on pants, Fenris has between two and ten minutes to drive the ghost hunters away.

He opens the door. Garrett Hawke’s smile has a determined, aggressive edge.

“Hey there,” he says. “You have objects throwing themselves around your home, right?”

“No,” Fenris says. “Leave.”

Behind him, a crash.

Garrett hisses sympathetically. “Were you fond of that lamp?”

“We have a cat.”

At his feet, purring. The cat trots past Fenris to rub against Bethany Hawke’s leg.

“Fast cat,” Garrett observes.

“Yes,” Fenris agrees, and picks up the cat, who scratches and spits viciously but can do little damage before Fenris tosses him back inside. “Leave, or I call the police.”

His sister cringes and says, pleadingly, “Garrett, let’s just go,” but Garrett Hawke holds firm. The “famous author” pans between the three of them.

“Look, that email said you’re experiencing temperature drops, phantom sounds and smells, disappearing objects, _lamps getting knocked over_ —I’m guessing you and Anders live together? He said this presence has been messing with your knife block and leaving tacks on the floor. This is poltergeist activity. Maybe even—and I don’t throw this term around lightly— _demonic influence_. Let me fix it.”

Fenris should be rushing, but he takes a moment to really appreciate what’s standing before him here.

The Hawkes are of a height, around six feet, and wear matching utility jackets quilted with tacky patches: “I Want to Believe” and a hand-painted “Tampa International G&L Film Festival” catch Fenris’s eye on his, a caduceus and Marilyn Monroe on hers. Both have their names stitched over the breast pocket. She is otherwise reasonably dressed, in bright red pants and sunflower-patterned scrubs, and he is wearing a Phantom Fireworks T-shirt with some kind of thigh holster over his jeans. Fenris can’t say exactly what’s holstered there, but it’s definitely not a gun.

So they don’t shoot the ghosts, at least.

He carries a hardened plastic suitcase and she is worrying at an abalone shell that hangs below the scarf on her neck. Her face is round and a little red with embarrassment, and Fenris would probably find the way his shirt stretches over his chest absolutely fascinating if he wasn’t so clearly a complete idiot.

Varric Tethras has a ponytail, which is all one really needs to know.

“You really believe all this, don’t you?”

Garrett Hawke’s eyes lock on his, and his smile stretches a little thinner. “Like God.”

Fenris returns his smile. “Fascinating.”

The cliché:

_You don’t know me._

_Yeah, but I know your type._

Bethany rolls her eyes and punches her brother’s arm, breaking the moment. “We can’t guarantee anything. You _know_ that.” She smiles at Fenris. “But we’ll try.”

Her smile drops as her eyes fall from Fenris’s chin to his hands.

_Fuck._

“Excuse me, but is that... Your tattoos, are they--?”

Fenris shuts the door. Varric Tethras cackles again.

Anders’s wet feet smack against the laminate flooring. “Wait! Wait, don’t let him scare you away!”

Behind the door, quiet swearing from the girl. In the house, Fenris presses his back into the doorknob and Anders, his hair bone dry but his ass wrapped in a fraying grey towel, bares his teeth.

“Let me through, you skeptic son-of-a-bitch. You think you’re Dana Scully hot shit, but guess what?”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re not!”

“I live here, I signed a lease, and I don’t have to let anyone in if I don’t want to.”

“You know what that sounds like, Fenris? That sounds like a psychopath taking his first hostage!”

“You know what I mean!”

A knock, level with Fenris’s waist, rumbles through the door. “Hey, ah, if you two aren’t sure about this, they usually don’t start taking readings or actually investigating anything for a couple hours. You could just fill out the paperwork and do the pre-interview while you decide?”

Anders fixes Fenris with a level gaze. Water drips from his skinny arms, and the distinctive stench of Dove For Men wafts off of him. “So, what’s it going to be, Fenris? A compromise, like mature roommates? Or tyranny?”

And this is how Fenris lets scam artists into his place of residence:

With a feral sneer, and a quick retreat to his bedroom.

Huddled on his mattress, on the floor, gnawing on the cuff of his jacket, Fenris listens to Garrett Hawke’s booming voice travel closer, and with every passing second of unfamiliar laughs, rustling, clicks, and footsteps, Fenris’s blood pressure rises. He hears Garrett Hawke say, “Hey, where’s the skeptic? We need him for the interview,” and his fist hits the wall at exactly the same moment that _Sonnets to Orpheus_ slides off the stack on his shelf and tumbles to the floor.


	2. Highly Invasive

The breakfast bar has, in the space of ten minutes, been cleared of its loam of junk mail and old dishes. On one side, Anders—still in his towel, but having at least thrown on a KU sweatshirt—is brewing coffee for his metaphysical saviors; on the other, Garrett Hawke unpacks his suitcase onto the counter—various tripods and colorful devices—Varric Tethras lays what Fenris supposes to be release forms out in a parallel line, camera still in hand, and Bethany Hawke types into a little tablet laid flat on the counter. She is, inexplicably, wearing the hood of her jacket up and her scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face.

The price, Fenris supposes, of not owning a kitchen table.

Varric, whose attire and aspect in every way suggests “low-budget porn director,” spots Fenris emerging from the hall and grins, waving him to his papers.

If he thinks Fenris isn’t going to read those down to the footnotes, he’s got another thing coming to him.

Anders is blabbering about the Goodwill furniture, “do you think any energy could be lingering on these objects,” and when Fenris clears his throat to ask what the fuck they need from him, everyone except Varric starts.

Bethany Hawke, overcoming her surprise first, throws her arms out and says, voice suddenly hoarse and muffled, accent suddenly heavily Puerto Rican, “Ah, sir, it’s time for the interview! Care to answer some… questions?” Her eyes, carrying the full burden of facial expression, are pleading.

“…Fine?”

He feels eyes burning into the side of his face. He turns and Garrett Hawke, with minute movement, shakes his head.

He jerks his head toward his sister. _Med student,_ he mouths. He points his thumb over his shoulder at Anders, who is doling out artificial sweetener in complete obliviousness. _TA. Huge crush._ He pantomimes zipping his mouth shut and nods to Fenris.

Fenris notices that Bethany’s name patch has been ripped off her jacket.

“Ah, what was your name again… Miss?”

Garrett’s grin could blind.

The relief is visible in Bethany’s eyes. “Bianca.”

Varric hums a tune, shuffling his papers uncomfortably.

“Yes,” Garrett says, loudly. “Dear Cousin Bianca, just moved up here from the little family farm in Puerto Rico to join the new family business. Psychic sensitivity runs in the family, you see, which is not to suggest that all Hawkes are mediums or even _believe_ in the supernatural! Some of my own siblings are filthy atheists, you know, and their big brother’s career choice should have no bearing on their academic credibility, if you ask me.”

His elbow is on the counter, and he waves about his blinking gadget for emphasis as he speaks, finally dropping his chin into his hand and asking Anders directly, “What do you think, sir?”

Anders blinks over his coffee cup. “Um… I concur?”

Garrett gives him a thumbs up and winks at his sister. She’s focusing studiously on her tablet.

“What’s your plan for this ‘investigation?’”

Garrett Hawke turns to Fenris, grinning again—as if his day just could not get any better. “I am so, so glad you asked… What was your name, again?”

“Fenris.”

“What a _fabulous_ name. I am so glad you asked, _Fenris._ ” His gadget, pointed in Fenris’s direction, starts beeping wildly, and Garrett frowns at it before shutting it off. “Plenty of time for that,” he mumbles, and sets it aside. “Our basic strategy is a sort of one-two punch: I collect objective, scientific evidence to measure what is happening and what might change, and B- _Bianca_ , here, tries to communicate with the spirit or spirits and resolve the issue, if it can be resolved. Our main goal isn’t to exorcise anything, or to sensationalize what _is_ or _isn’t_ there, it’s to make your home a healthy place and restore your peace of mind.” A dazzling grin.

“You could sell cars,” Bethany mumbles.

“Speaking of!” Anders whisks the mugs off the counter, two handles precariously grasped in each hand, and passes them from ghost hunter to ghost hunter. Fenris watches him spill hot coffee all over Garrett Hawke’s left hand, and he watches Garrett Hawke’s eyes grow a little brighter with pain, but otherwise he shows no sign of distress whatsoever and, hand dripping, brings the mug to his mouth for an appreciative sip. _Fascinating._

“So sweet,” he says, voice rough.

“I really am, aren’t I?” Anders says, with a desperate laugh.

“A-ha-ha-ha.” Finger gun. Garrett side-eyes his sister nervously. Bethany sinks further down on the stool.

Fenris, still awkwardly standing in the middle of the floor, is having flashbacks to high school: the inept flirting, the drama, the nihilism and quiet sudden suicidal ideation, _If I died now, I wouldn’t have to find out which of the Hawke siblings is going to bang my roommate at the end of the night._ Varric catches Fenris’s eye and quietly points him toward the forms; Fenris thinks, at least the forms will engage his higher brain functions, and begins surveying them. _Personal Image Release Agreement._ There’s going to be a clause about pornography in here, he’d bet money on it.

Anders clears his throat. “Speaking of, though, before we go any further, ah—About that estimate? The price, your price, the money? How much do you think, um…?”

“Three hundred?”

“Oh.”

“Okay, okay, let me elaborate. This is what you’re buying with that three hundred dollars.” He holds up a finger, _wait for it_ , and takes what looks like a digital thermometer out of his suitcase. “We’re going to monitor for temperature fluctuations.” He claps this down on the counter and takes out another device. “EMF fluctuations.” Clap, new device. “Laser gridding and motion detectors. Full-spectrum cameras. A _spirit box._ ” He pauses here, biting his lip in barely-concealed glee, and Fenris guesses that this is supposed to be impressive. “ _And_ you’re getting someone with years of experience with paranormal investigation, _and_ you’re getting Beth— _Bianca,_ the best empath in these fifty states and incorporated territories. We aren’t amateurs, like some other local investigators. The Hawkes have been doing this work for _generations._ It’s in the blood. _”_

He pauses to shrug out of his jacket, and Fenris skillfully suppresses any visible reaction to his arms or any of the rippling or definition that is suddenly visible underneath his t-shirt, but he does feel that he has a better understanding of literature, poetry, et cetera for having seen this, which is to say, Garrett Hawke is a very beautiful man. Which is going to make this day even more exhausting.

Anders’s eyes go wide as the lens of Varric’s camera. He says, “Here, let me hang that up for you,” and leaps to snatch the jacket out of Garrett’s hands—And, yes, he _definitely_ copped an experimental tricep squeeze. Shameless.

“But, ah, you don’t need to pay us until we’re done. Be sure you liked the service, all that.”

“Lovely,” Anders giggles. Shamelessly.

“Questions, questions…” Bethany tugs her hood farther over her face. “Just need some background information, very, _very_ quickly.”

“You feeling anything, cousin?”

Bethany nods. “Lots of anger. The energy feels… restive, right now, but it’s uneasy. Annoyed, really.”

Fenris scoffs. “That’s not a ghost, that’s me.”

He can hear Bethany start to say something, but she trails off on a solitary phoneme as her eyes drift back to the tattoos on his neck, his hands.

She probably isn’t sure what they are, he tells himself. She stumbled upon a diagram once, years ago, that’s it. Just don’t give her reason to suspect she’s onto something. He tries to focus on the form, the form, the stupid form, but he can’t stop himself from popping his collar, pulling his zipper higher up his neck. In three years, no one has shown the slightest indication of recognizing his tattoos.

Of course, he hasn’t been in close contact with a medium in three years, either.

He abandons the forms. Fuck them, he hasn’t read a word of it and he scribbles his signature, probably he’s just legally given them open permission to cut video of him into emo fetish porn, fine. The breakfast bar is far too crowded, so Fenris takes a seat on the couch, on the other side of the room. Anders follows him and, frostily, sets a mug on the coffee table in front of him—“You’re _welcome”_ —and yes, he still hasn’t noticed that Fenris takes it black. It’s sweet enough to kill.

“First question, for the record: what e _xactly_ are you hoping to get from this investigation?”

Suddenly, Bethany gasps, her hand flying to her throat draped with fabric, and the lights in the kitchen flicker rapidly, on off on off, for maybe ten seconds. Anders, vindicated, gavels his hand against the pantry door.

“That! I want _that_ to stop!”

Garrett is fumbling with the colorful device that beeped at Fenris, jabbing his elbow at Varric, who reassures him, “I got it, I got it.” Fenris hears the replay, Bethany’s gasp and Anders’s hand on the pantry, as Varric shakes his head at the screen on the side of his camera.

“Okay,” Bethany says, hands shaking ever-so-slightly over her tablet. “Okay. They’re quiet again. They don’t like dawdling. Really, really don’t like dawdling. Can, um, can I ask a few personal questions? Before we start setting up?”

Varric holds up his camera and conspicuously presses down on the power button. “Cameras _not_ rolling for this part, no fear.”

After a few innocent questions, like, names, ages, occupations?

(“Grad student and certified EMT.”

“Bouncer.” Fenris had gone in to apply for a bartending position, because getting a bartending license had seemed like a good idea when he was nineteen and stumbling, vague and directionless, out of high school, even though he could only legally find work if he was willing to drive over the state line to Tennessee every night—so he had never actually worked at a bar before, and they weren’t hiring bartenders but they said he looked scary and they’d pay him to watch the door. So, Fenris gets paid to watch the door.)

And then several highly invasive questions, like, religious beliefs?

 (“Graduate of the Mother of Mercy School for Troubled Boys, a-ha-ha.”

“Chose not to disclose.”)

“Okay, and we’re the first people you’ve contacted, right? Right.” Bethany tucks a lock of hair back behind her hood and types. “Okay. I don’t want to step on any toes here, but…” Her eyes flash to her brother, fiddling with a tripod and what looks like a large laser pointer. “…Have either of you, or any friends or acquaintances, experimented--in this home--with… Ouiji?”

Garrett freezes. Fenris can practically see his ears perk up.

“No,” Fenris says.

Anders gives him a sharp look and, slowly, agrees: “No.”

Garrett’s shoulders relax, and he continues with the laser. Okay _._

“Has anyone else in the building been affected by the activity?”

Anders taps his spoon, coated in the Splenda he’s loading into his third cup of coffee, contemplatively against the lip of his mug. Which is, for the record, bright yellow and shaped like a cat’s head. “There are four units in the building, but I think the only other person living here is the lady below us. We could talk to her.”

Bethany bobs her head. “Definitely, definitely. Excellent idea, Anders!” She squeezes her eyes shut, but Anders doesn’t seem to notice her distress.

“Um,” she continues. “I don’t mean to pry, and this is all on your own judgment, because you know you best, but—If you use any substances, or you have any conditions that you think may have influenced your experiences with this activity… Like, hallucinations? You don’t have to disclose anything you don’t want to, but it would probably help if you told me now, just to help separate symptoms from evidence.”

Anders holds up a finger.  He stands, open-mouthed and conflicted, for a beat before scurrying around the breakfast bar, holding the towel up on his skinny hips, and whispering into Bethany’s hood approximately where her ear would be.

Fenris feels bad for her, honestly. The poor sap is probably huffing Dove For Men right now, thinking it’s the best thing she’s ever sniffed, trying desperately not to imagine what would happen if that towel just… slipped.

She nods, a restrained, steady movement, and Anders nods back, moving to wring his hands but instead wrapping them around himself. “Let’s talk in the other room,” she says, and just before she disappears into the hall with Anders she turns back to give her brother a desperate look. He salutes her.

“Varric,” Garrett says, back to watching-replaying the flashing lights video on the shorter man’s camera. “Do me a flavor-saver, go run up to the Quick Mart and buy us some Swisher Sweets.”

“You smoke _and_ teach karate?”

“Not for me, for the spirit.”

Varric grumbles and seizes his camera, and when the door shuts behind him, Fenris is left deep in the crevice of the sofa, mug cooling in his hands, alone with Garrett Hawke.

Fenris’s eyes wander to the wall, to the framed print of _Liberty Leading the People_ Anders has hanging there with, for some reason, the phrase “Viva la vida” artistically superimposed over Liberty. Fenris would probably understand what it means if he ever actually looked at the radical politics (Socialist? Vegan?) blog Anders is always talking about, but as it stands, Fenris has grown so adept at ignoring him when the subject comes up that he can’t even remember the URL anymore.

His eyes wander back to the ghost hunter.

Garrett looks up from his laser to nod at him. “I know you.”

“Do you?”

“I remember you, you came to my fireworks stand and asked me for directions to the art museum. I told you I don’t think we have one of those, you were like, baffled, and I tried to sell you some Roman candles. Then, you left.”

Fenris has no memory of this whatsoever.

“Ah,” he says, nodding. Garrett seems to find this amusing.

“Your tattoos are pretty extreme, huh? I like it.”

Fenris raises his mug. “At least someone does.”

He cocks his head and asks the obvious: “Why get full-body tattoos if you don’t like them?”

Fenris smiles over his cold coffee. “Superstition.”

Wisely recognizing a loaded word when he hears one, Garrett Hawke steps off.  “Actually,” he says, crossing to the couch, towering over Fenris in his crevice, to offer his wrist out for inspection. “I have a tattoo, too. It’s not as extreme as yours, true, but I only teared up a _little_ when they did it.”

Pretending not to wonder what brand of cologne he’s smelling (some kind of Old Spice?), Fenris sits up to squint at it. His biceps are excellent, and his nail beds are clean. Admirable, Fenris notes objectively. “Why the hell did you get an _I_ tattooed on your wrist?” A capital I with a curve on one side of the bottom and top lines.

A dark look overcomes Garrett’s face. He retracts his hand and he mumbles, “Actually, nevermind,” and wanders back to his laser.

_Okay._

Fenris discards the mug onto the coffee table and slides a paperback out of the pocket in the lining of his jacket (He’d forgotten what the last thing he stashed there was, it’s Li-Young Lee) just as Anders and Bethany reemerge from the back of the apartment.

“Fenris?” Anders says, hostile and mysteriously wearing pants.

“ _Yes?”_

Bethany, her hood having fallen down but her scarf still tied around her face, has one hand pressed over her heart and one pointing behind her, toward the bedrooms. “There’s another presence here. I. I heard a woman’s voice. In the room with the books.”

Fenris stands up. “Why were you in there?”

“Two presences? Christ, this place is, what? Nine hundred square feet?”

“That room is off-limits. You shouldn’t have been in there.”

“She called me,” Bethany says, and he sees tears glisten in her eyes. “She asked for you.”

The three of them lock eyes on Fenris: one angry, one anguished, and one curious. The cat pads up and sits at his feet, tail batting back and forth as he stares up.

“Enough of this.” He drops the book on the coffee table, and his voice does not shake. “You can play as many of these mind games with _him_ as you want. _I_ am leaving, and when I come back, I want this to be over. I’ll take no part in this. _”_

And Fenris takes a step to do that, to leave, _get out_ , but as he does, the cat leaps at him with a wild hiss and buries its teeth into the sleeve of his leather jacket, into his arm—

—And at the same moment, Anders cries out, and when he yanks the sleeve of his sweatshirt up to his elbow, four deep, glistening gashes tear down his forearm—

—And at the same moment, Bethany Hawke screams, as piercing as the teeth.

Garrett runs to his sister first.

“I’m fine,” she gasps, and grasps at Anders’s hand. He is swearing breathlessly.

Fenris shakes the cat off and as it tears out of the room, Garrett grabs his arm and pulls his sleeve up: four shallow punctures, beading red.

“This is too much for me, Garrett,” Bethany says, her knuckles white around the abalone shell at her neck and around Anders’s hand.

Garrett shakes his head. He cuts his hand through the air. “No. No, we can do this.”

“It’s more than I can handle, Garrett. I told you I’d stay on if you only took me to benign haunts— _This—_ This is _not_ benign.”

“We can’t call her, we can’t. I _won’t._ ”

“She’s an exorcist, Garrett! This is what she _does._ ”

“Her _methods—“_

“Damn her methods! Damn methods, damn ethics, she gets results! She saves people, and we _need_ her!” She shakes Anders’s arm for emphasis. “This poltergeist is out for blood!”

Garrett Hawke crosses his arms, then uncrosses them, then looks off to the side and sighs discontentedly, shaking his leg. He asks Fenris if he can borrow his cell phone.

Fifteen minutes later, Marian Hawke arrives.


	3. Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile

Anders didn’t _want_ to hate his roommate. He didn’t set out to do that, but honestly? Fenris just made himself so hateable, from the very beginning. Anders wouldn’t have even accepted his application (He checked off _NO_ on question 2, Do you love cats? For God’s sake!), but Fenris was the only person who applied.

So was Anders happy when Ser Pounce’s beautiful carnivore’s fangs sank through Fenris’s trademark Bad Boy Leather Jacket™ with the excessive studs and the spikes on the shoulders? No, of course not. Was he sorry?

No! Not one bit!

Especially not since Anders came out even more scathed, after the fucking demon poltergeist _whatever_ that Fenris—Anders has no doubt—tracked into this apartment dug its transdimensional demon claws into Anders’s fucking skin. Can demon claws carry pathogens?

Cat teeth can. So after letting Bianca snap some pics and swallowing a fortifying dose of children’s motrin and an ativan, Anders holds Fenris’s arm under the faucet and scrubs with antibacterial soap. Fenris gripes the whole time, of course, but Anders is a medical doctor. Or, you know, nearly. And that, at least, carries weight even in the twisted weed-drenched satanistic world his roommate lives in.

After he slaps a bandaid on the bastard, Anders rates the risk of infection at low to none. Which means that Anders’s risk of getting sued over the bite is also low to none.

While Anders scrubs his liability away and Fenris rhythmically clenches-unclenches his hand to avoid admitting that the soap stings, Garrett calls his exorcist contact. Their conversation is terse and makes Anders think of mobsters or PIs—the other kind of PI:

“Yeah. It’s me. You know why I’m calling. Yeah. You’re at home? I’ll send Varric to pick you up. Yeah. Fuck you too. Bye.”

Exciting! Think exciting, he tells himself, not terrifying. Terrifying is bad, and makes him want to run crying back to Catholicism and beg someone to marinate his demon wound in holy water, or at the very least take another ativan. Exciting is good. Exciting makes you think sexy thoughts, like, would Garrett Hawke be into Maltese Falcon roleplay?

As Garrett jabs his pointer finger at the buttons of Fenris’s shitty Nokia phone, Bianca wanders into the kitchenette and Anders asks her to tell him a little something, anything, about this exorcist who’s going to save his life.

“Hmm. _Well.”_ She steeples her fingers, rolling her brown eyes up to search the stucco ceiling or the dead gnats in the light. “She’s amazing. She’s an ordained minister in four different Christian denominations. Once she read Chris Martin’s fortune and told him that thing with Gwen wasn’t going to last.”

Anders frowns. “It _didn’t_ last.”

“Exactly.”

Anders rubs his chin. “So she’s the real deal.”

Fenris, huddled by the pantry with a towel on his arm and a fistful of dry Applejacks in his hand, sneers.

Bianca nods deeply. “That’s not even half of it,” she says. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and Anders wonders why she covers her face like that. He’s never seen a religious covering quite like that before, and if she was worried about airborne diseases he’d think she’d just buy some facemasks. She probably does have some kind of laryngitis, judging by the rasp in her voice. Maybe it’s a fashion thing?

“She was a classicist,” Bianca says, hushed. “She was about to graduate valedictorian at UF—“

Anders gasps. Fenris wrinkles his nose—obviously out of the loop, an out-of-stater (North Carolina? Was it Maryland?)—so Anders leans in to tell him, “UF is, like, the _Yale_ of Florida state universities.”

“Ah.” Fenris nods, widening his eyes _sarcastically_ and stuffing his cheeks with another fistful of cereal. The bastard.

“—She was about to graduate,” Bianca continues. “But instead, she just… left. Dropped out, for no reason at all. Now she’s the resident Tarot reader at Heaven and Earth Metaphysical Store… She’s a stage magician and a pianist. Every summer she goes to Madeira Beach and does body paint performance art on the boardwalk.”

Fenris stops mid-chew to frown.

Anders decides he doesn’t care. “But she does exorcisms?”

“We weren’t always Hawke and Hawke,” Bianca says, and her eyes drift, heavy, to her cousin. He’s standing by the front door, mumbling furtively into the Nokia, and his ass is amazing. “We used to be Hawke, Hawke, and Hawke. Paranormal Investigators.” She sighs. “I was hardly even a part of it, really, it was all those two. They were a dream team.”

“So, wait, the exorcist is a relative?”

Against the sliding glass door to the porch, rain begins to patter. Bianca takes a step towards it, and lays her hand on the glass. “Yes… She’s my s-s-s-cousin.”

Lighting!

Someone bangs on the door!

Garrett strides into the kitchenette and holds the Nokia out to Fenris, an aloof tilt to his chin. “She’s here.”

A sudden chill!

The door swings open, and a woman rides in on a cloud of smoke. The tobacco hits his nose and Anders is right back there in seminary school, lighting up on the back stoop, thinking not about scripture or nicotine addiction, but jumping in front of a bus.

Her hair billows behind her, like black smoke; her shiny black loafers immediately leave a scuff on the tile. She takes a final long drag on the cigar before tossing it into the hall, onto the concrete behind her.

“Go get it, spirit.”

The door slams shut and the lights flicker wildly. Bianca wrings her hands.

“You’ve just made them mad, Marian.”

She coughs into the crook of her arm. “That’s the point, _Bianca_ dearest.” She winks at her cousin, for some reason. Bianca sighs discontentedly and hugs herself.

Marian smoothes her hands down the front of her white dress shirt (is that a bloodstain on the collar?). “It’s Ouija time, bitches.”

Garrett’s hands are in his hair, pulling, and his eyes look set to pop out. “Marian. Marian.”

“Yes, brother?”

“Marian. I can’t even begin!”

“Then don’t.” She tosses her hair out of her face, and it lands back in her face. She coughs one more time, not bothering to cover up this time, and she swings her massive patchwork bag onto the breakfast bar with a magnificent clatter—a bag of a thousand kitschy fabric samples, embroidered over with flamingos and bees. Her black slacks have dirt on the knees and shins, her eyeliner is smudged to hell, and frankly, if she said right now that she’d been sleeping in a highway ditch when she got the call, Anders would believe it—but somehow, Anders has never been more enchanted.

“We don’t have time to play ‘science’ games, Garrett. We’ve had first blood: it’s time to play it fast, loose, and sexy. None of those words apply to science, but all of them apply to Ouija.”

Garrett presses his lips together and, quietly, screams.

This whole time, Anders notices, Fenris has been swearing softly and trying to yank his jacket collar up to hide his face.

Of course he would know her! They probably go to Satan church together. (Honestly, the evidence against Fenris re: genesis of the haunting just gets stronger and stronger.)

Marian pulls a half-melted tower candle out of her bag, several tea candles and used matches tumbling out with it, and nods at Anders. “You’re the homeowner? Resident? Renter, whatever?”

Anders glances back at Fenris. He’s turned his back to them, arms crossed, pretending to study the ramen packets in the pantry.

“Yes,” Anders says, and he rests his hip against the counter so that he can strategically cross his legs and put his stylish footwear at an advantageous angle. “And you’re the woman who’s going to save me?”

Is it trashy to flirt with a sister and her brother at the same time? Yes. Is that going to stop him?

It never has before!

She taps her foot, once, and rubs her nose, squinting at him. He doesn’t let it phase him—he gets a deathly itch, like spiders up his neck, but he doesn’t scratch—and a moment later, she murmurs, “Yes… Maybe.”

Sorry, Garrett!

Her eyes flash to something behind him. Anders whips around: Fenris has tucked himself behind the folding pantry door, and Bianca gives him a little wave, eyes grinning.

He turns back around, and Marian has gone back to digging in her bag. “On second thought, no,” she says. “But I will exorcise your poltergeist.”

What could have gone wrong? Probably Fenris did something to undermine him, somehow.

Ah, well. There’s always the brother.

After she unloads at least a dozen more tower candles, Marian gives the bottom of the bag a quick tug, and out clatters a wooden box.

Inlaid in dark maple:

_OUIJA_

Anders is beginning to get nervous again. Maybe it’s a good thing she doesn’t like him, after all.

“Where’s the kitchen table?”

“They don’t have one.” Garrett scratches at the scruff on the side of his face, scowling. “Where’s my author? Did you blood sacrifice him to Beelzebub on the way over?”

She smacks her hand against the counter and pinches the bridge of her nose. “God _damn_ it, Garrett, now why’d you have to go and say that name right before I do a séance?”

His eye twitches.

“He’s in the car, god damn. He said he’ll come up when we’re done with the séance, just set his camera up on a tripod and shit.”

“Varric doesn’t like Ouija, either.”

“He has trauma memories from Bartrand, fuck you.”

Garrett scowls and scratches at his teeth. Ew?

“So,” Anders says way too loudly. “You guys really are siblings, huh?”

Marian raises her chin and shakes her head. “Worse than that.” She sticks out her wrist.

Garrett rolls his eyes, but after she _ahems_ a few times and stomps on his foot, he reluctantly sets his left wrist against her right.

Anders leans in for a better look: an _I_ on either Hawke, separately, looks completely stupid, but joined together, they clearly form a symbol of…

“Gemini? So you two are… twins?”

“Prepare for trouble,” she says, head bowed solemnly.

Garrett tucks his hands under his armpits and huffs. “We’re twins only in the legal and genetic sense. All fraternal bonds between us have been long since dissolved, thank you very much.”

Behind him in the pantry, Anders hears muffled chuckling.

Marian sniffs. “Disown me all you want, brother. One day I’m going to swallow sixteen caffeine pills and finally hire a lawyer to cash in on my half of the inheritance, and I’ll pull Granddaddy Amell’s mansion out from under you. Then _you’ll_ be the one living in Merrill’s basement.”

“Good fucking luck. I had Varric’s brother tell me all about squatters’ rights, you’ll never get me out of there.”

In the pantry, a snort. By the sink, a distressed cousin dancing from foot to foot. Anders, sensing a touchy situation, steps in.

He armors himself with the oven mitt and potholder and, carefully, picks up the Ouija board (oh god oh god oh god). “So! You, you really think this will work? You think a séance will put an end to—“

The knife block topples over, and a cheese knife flies, handle-first, into Anders’s thigh.

“—That?” he squeaks.

“No,” Garrett says.

“Yes,” Marian says.

“Maybe!” Bianca pipes in.

“Lovely,” Anders says, panic-giggling. Marian takes the Ouija box from him and strides into the living room.

“We’ll do this sleep-over style, which is, I’ve found, the most powerful séance style in existence. Board on the coffee table, pillows on the floor, asses on the pillows. We’ll all hold hands. Do you have any pizza boxes around? It helps the ambiance.” She drops the box on the coffee table with Fenris’s mug and book, causing the coffee to splash and the bookcover to stain. Good thing he couldn’t see that.

“Marian,” Garrett says, his civil tone highly strained. “Might I make a suggestion?”

“No,” she says, and flips a clasp on the side of her box. Smiling and almost sing-song, “You called _me_ because your suggestions were _ineffective._ ” She opens the box and lifts from it a flat wood plank and one of those little triangles: a stunningly really there Ouija board. Yes, No, Goodbye, alphabet, the whole shabang.

“He’s a Catholic,” Bianca says, suddenly. Oh, her voice sounds a little clearer! It’s lovely. What?

Marian hisses through her teeth. She points at him. “Listen to me. Right fucking now, listen.”

Anders fiddles at the drawstring of his hoodie. He wants to make sure everyone knows he’s not actually a Catholic-Catholic, and has been in fact officially excommunicated, but the sudden sense of being reverse-inquisited stills his tongue. What’s so bad about Catholics, after all; Karl was a Jesuit, and he’s still probably the best person Anders has met in his life.

What the hell is he thinking? He puts his hands on his hips. “I said I went to Catholic school, I never said anything about being religious.”

Marian shakes her head. “No, nuh-uh, doesn’t matter. It’s still in your brain, isn’t it?” She taps her temple, then points again. “This ouija board scares the yoga pants off you, doesn’t it? Well, stop it! Stop being fucking scared! Don’t you dare be scared of this fucking board, you hear me?”

Anders sputters. He scoffs. He rolls his eyes to the ceiling, then back to Marian, who’s still staring him down with lips pursed and finger accusing. “Please,” he says. “I’m a first-responder. It takes more than a little burnt wood to scare me.”

“If you’re scared,” she says, voice low. “You’re gonna fuck this whole thing up. You’re gonna get fucked up.”

Anders shrugs. “No problem.” He laughs, to emphasize. Ha-ha-ha! Scared, him?

Oh god oh god oh god—

Elbows on the breakfast bar, Garrett clicks his tongue, and Marian waves him off. She starts tossing throw pillows every which way onto the carpet. “Whoever’s in the closet better come out, too, we need everybody.”

A moment of confusion as everyone else in the room self-consciously looks around.

“It’s a pantry,” Fenris says, struggling out from between the shelves and the folding door. Canned corn avalanches after him. Marian’s eyes light up.

“You.” She taps her nose. “ _You._ I knew we’d cross paths again sooner or later.”

“You play piano at my workplace every Saturday.”

“Every _other_ Saturday. And I was told not to come back last Saturday, which is fine, because they were paying me in leftover peanuts anyway. My point is, the prediction was, in fact, dicey and not a sure thing. Yet, here we are.”

“Yes,” he grumbles, and almost wheels flat onto his back when he steps on a corn can. Anders skillfully disguises his laugh with a cough.

Garrett looks incredibly concerned.

“You know him?” He maintains his casual tone, back to the tattoo boy, but there’s fear in his eyes.

“We’ve met,” Fenris says.

“I was at the piano,” she says, spreading her fingers over an imaginary keyboard. Anders hears the trill of a chord. Her blue eyes glitter like sapphires, or the Gulf of Mexico behind a woman covered head to toe with gold body paint. “I had just finished a number. Camptown Races. And taken a sip—“ She pantomimes; Anders can see the crystal shot glass as she sets it on the piano. “—Of my drink—And that’s when I saw him.” She points, and her French tip is broken. Fenris’s hands are in his pockets; he’s looking anywhere else, waiting for it to be over.

“That man,” she continues, and takes a step forward. “That… Black Parade-looking motherfucker. Out the corner of my eye.” She draws a French tip, intact, over one eye, and steps forward. Fenris, ten feet away, shuffles back. “And he saw me… Yes, our eyes met. Sapphire and forest green, which together form _light green._ A most auspicious color, in common parlance representing that most auspicious of commands, _Go._ And what did I do?”

“I’m sure I don’t remember.”

“I played him a song.” She plants her elbows on the counter beside her twin, who is wearing a gruesome grimace. “On my piano. A call, instinctual, to a kindred soul.”

“You played ‘Moonlight Sonata’ to a full bar on a Saturday night.”

“You know the song,” she whispers, vindicated.

Fenris sucks in his cheeks, clearly fighting down a smile. Garrett, who has twisted around to check his reaction, looks, frankly, sororicidal.

You know, if the poltergeist flung a steak knife into Anders’s jugular right now, he wouldn’t have to find out which of the Hawke siblings is going to bang his roommate at the end of the night.

Marian taps her nose. “You started this haunting, didn’t you, you paranormal sonofabitch?”

All hints of flirtatiousness rise out of Fenris’s body like steam under an iron. He stands straighter. “No.”

Bianca drifts in from the far wall, where she’d been studying Anders’s high school swimming team picture, probably in preparation for the séance—you never know what’s going to become relevant with these domestic hauntings, after all. “His tattoos… Marian, is that--?”

“Ask me, I’m right here.”

She cringes. Marian taps her nose again.

“So what are they, mysterious man? What would you call your tattoos?”

“A mistake.”

“ _I_ would call them _ancient Roman ghost glyphs_.”

Anders gasps.

“The very first,” she says. “I’ve ever seen applied to a living human body. They really fell out of vogue after the Victorian neo-pagan craze died down, you know.”

Anders bounces on his heels. His mind: reeling. His heart: pumping. His suspicions: confirmed! Everyone always wants to think he’s blowing things out of proportion, but _every single time--_

“You bastard!” he accuses. “You lied to me! You violated the lease!”

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” Fenris says, because he’s backed into a corner and all he has left is _argumentum ad hominem._ “How did I violate the lease? By offending you?”

“Damages! Demons are damages, my security deposit is gone!”

“Anders, you don’t even know what she’s talking about.”

Anders plops his elbows down next to Marian’s. “So,” he says. “Just what are these ‘ghost glyphs?’ Is that the academic term?”

She picks up the cold coffee mug Anders had given her twin, clumps of nondairy creamer solidifying the surface, and swigs. “Frankly,” she says, top lip mustached with pale coffee. “Fuck the academy.”

Anders gets a chill.

“In lay terminology, it’s often called Prosperpine’s Matrix. Or, as Nero knew it, _ancientye omanre hostge lyphge.”_

“She’d know,” Garrett says solemnly, four elbows down from Anders. “She did the Latin SAT.”

“That’s pig Latin,” Fenris says.

Anders holds up a finger. “Okay, I took two years of Latin in high school for my EMT program and the Bright Futures requirement, okay, and that was a while ago but I’m _pretty sure_ that’s Latin.”

Bianca clears her throat. “It really isn’t.”

Fenris has such an ugly snicker.

To be completely fair, Anders was a D student and a truant.

Marian pushes off the counter and steps around, feet hitting the tile with heavy reverberations, into the kitchenette. Fenris stands his ground, which is a single one-by-one tile between the refrigerator and the Mr Coffee, but the flight of his eyes from woman to hall to door tells Anders that he’s calculating an escape route, should the kitchenette get too hot.

“Let me take you on a journey,” Marian says, pacing before Fenris like a malamute gone wild before one of those mangy little sandhill chicks. “Back, into antiquity. The year is twenty before Christ, and the place is Augustus’s home on Palatine Hill. The woman is Livia, looking sexy as hell in her stola, and with the aid of the Vestal Virgins she is attempting to do something extraordinary: to contact the spirit… still lingering, on that hallowed hill… Of pious Aeneas. How do they summon him, so many ages dead, you ask? Why, by feeding him the life-energy of a living man. Livia’s slave, Clemens, is that man… the first man to be inked with her perfected matrix. The matrix that allowed pious Aeneas to tap into his heartbeat, to gain just enough power to speak to her, to tell her… what, is lost to time. Something, surely. Maybe, ‘don’t get your hopes up with Virgil, he’s not gonna finish that poem.’”

Fenris claps. Fingers-to-palm, like an asshole. “Bravo,” he says. “Not only have you completely butchered the story, but you seem to have taken legend for truth. As a primary source, then, let me tell you that I’ve had these for eight years and my ‘life energy’ is _completely—_ “

With a choking gasp, he catches himself on the freezer handle—reeling like one of those guys at the blood bank who didn’t take the orange juice.

“Marian,” Garrett snaps. “You _told it_ how to drain him.”

“Hmm. Fuck.”

“Just do the fucking séance,” Fenris snarls. Then, turning on Anders: “None of this means I started it, the lease is intact.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Anders says, and the preparations begin.

Garrett opens the fusebox and shuts off the power (“To eliminate EMF interference”) and Marian lights each of her candles, scattered over the surfaces of the den at such a dizzying variety of heights and distances that Anders has to worry that she’s just going to pull an optical illusion on them. Bianca leads Anders’s roommate from Hell to the coffee table with a steadying hand on his arm, and when they’re all seated on the handmade pillows Anders’s mom sent him when he moved in (“Excellent,” Marian says when he tells her. “Spirits like emotional baggage.”) they join hands—Anders holds Bianca’s with his right, her grip a little tight but her hands very soft, and he holds Garrett’s with his left—big, and he wants to say sexy, but if we’re being honest a little moisturizer would do him good.

He feels the first prickle of sweat on his neck as the temperature begins to climb, and Marian, after congratulating the ghost on switching it up a little, takes a long, full breath.

“I am about to greet the spirit.” She looks directly at Anders. “Does anyone have any _anxieties_ they would like to vent before we begin? Remember: fear is a dinner for spirits so hearty, it makes Fenris look like a Caesar salad in comparison.”

Fenris, chin to his chest, snickers and repeats, _Caesar salad._

Anders clears his throat and raises his/Bianca’s hand.

“Yes, sir?”

“I was just wondering,” he says nonchalantly. “People don’t really get, like, possessed by the devil doing this, right?”

“No, no…. Not the devil, no… Almost never, possession almost never happens. It’s all propaganda and Hollywood sensationalism, blown way out of proportion.”

Anders laughs. “Oh, yeah, I know. Just thought I’d check with the professional. On we go.”

He feels eyes burning into the side of his face.

He turns to his right and Garrett is biting his lip, and with minute movement, shakes his head.

Okay, so, Anders has to get out of this.

But before he can say anything, Marian is placing her hands, along with Bianca’s and Fenris’s, on the little triangle. “Hello, spirit!” she calls out, her voice powerful like the megaphone evangelists one often encounters in the city on national holidays, cracking and dry like her brother’s hands.

Okay, Anders tells himself. Just don’t be scared, and there’s nothing to be scared about. There’s no _way_ he’ll get possessed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note added at sibling's insistence: this chapter features my sister's Marian Hawke, and the chapter title was selected by her. Also I want to add that there was supposed to be a sun and moon Unicode emoji on either side of the word OUIJA but AO3 does not, unfortunately, support Unicode emojis.


	4. Anders Gets Possessed

Garrett doesn’t hate his twin sister. He can easily imagine dueling her to the death on the top of a great plateau in the middle of the Mojave desert as the camera sweeps overhead and a cool guitar solo shreds over the soundtrack, yes—but he’s been imagining that since they were four years old; so has she. That’s why he has a scar on his forehead from slicing it on a shard of glass when Marian knocked him off the big rock they were fighting on in the woods. He definitely didn’t hate his twin sister when he was four years old, therefore, he doesn’t hate her now.

Since she clearly hates him, that makes him the better person. Winning at such a tragic game as family feuding hurts, for sure, but he’ll take the victory all the same.

He holds that thought in his mind while he watches her wave laundry-scented candle smoke into her face as if it contained the word of Lord Apollo himself and, in the process, commandeer his investigation.

Just look at her, Garrett thinks. Yakking it up, oh so cool and oh so dangerous. Playing with matches like some ninth grade Joan Jett wannabe—Well, guess what, Marian? Just because you haven’t had to break out the fire extinguisher yet doesn’t mean you never will.

Garrett should know. He has a fire extinguisher in every room of Grandfather’s house.

He sits there, gay as hell and holding the hands of two very handsome and mostly clean-smelling men, one of whom is off-limits because Bethany but one of whom seems definitely at least a little same sex-oriented, whom he must race to seduce before Marian can, and he can’t even enjoy it because his sister is just so damn terrible.

Marian’s eyes are shut and the planchette isn’t moving. Garrett’s EMF meter, however, is going wild.

“Turn the fucking beepy off.”

Being the better person, Garrett obliges. He would take the Spirit Box out of its holster—fair is fair, after all, one thing for another—but that would mean putting Fenris’s hand on his thigh, and he doesn’t think they’re there yet. Instead, he puts Anders’s hand on his chest and unclips the digital thermometer from his shirt collar. Anders a _hems_ , and Garrett sets the thermometer on the table for ease of observation. Oh, yeah, they’re climbing the nineties.

Luckily, Garrett has already completely disinvested in this investigation: if she doesn’t want his help, she won’t get it. He is, figuratively if not literally, watching at a cool distance. The urge to record data is barely a whisper in his head.

Rain chips at the sliding glass door. Marian’s eyes flicker beneath her eyelids, restless, and she purses her lips. “Why the sudden reticence? Care to use your words, spirit? Or do you just want to keep throwing fits?”

A cracking noise, and a mournful whine from Anders. Garrett turns, and oh yeah, that’s the end of their TV.

“Maybe it’s put off by the theatrics,” Fenris suggests.

She shushes him.

“It could have been a Catholic in its earthly life, perhaps it’s offended.”

Anders shushes him, and kicks Garrett under the coffee table. He guesses that was meant for Fenris.

“It could have trauma memories.”

“Sir, I have to ask you to stop disrupting this séance. Misbehaving won’t get you out of it, but I _will_ place a curse on you.”

The TV topples onto the floor with a _crash._ The Coldplay lithograph follows.

Marian slams her/Fenris’s fist down on the table; the planchette rattles on the board. “Answer for your disgusting crimes! You _stole_ this man’s—“ She shakes Fenris’s hand in the air; he wrinkles his nose but allows it. “—Very life-force! You assaulted—“ She reaches her/Bethany’s hand over the board and points. “—That man! A blood crime! And you’ve committed hundreds of dollars of property damage! Do you think you have Miranda Rights, spirit? You aren’t protected by U.S. law a _nymore,_ my friend—in this undiscovered country, _I_ am judge, jury, and executioner!”

Only twenty-four, and already power mad…  Such a sad fate for a beloved sister.

The planchette rattles of its own accord and Marian grins, setting her hands back on it and letting it guide her to—

GOODBYE

She roars.

“Perhaps you should try asking nicely,” Garrett suggests. Fenris nods.

She roars. Garrett watches his thermometer tick up, up to 100, and then drop like something that is no longer hot down to a cool 71. Bethany, whose knuckles had been white around Marian and Anders’s hands, exhales.

“Is—is it over already?” Anders asks. “Did it leave?”

Beth shakes her head. “They’re ignoring us now. I don’t think they like your attitude, Marian.”

“Understandable,” Fenris says. His hand, in Garrett’s, is as cold and disinterested as his tone, which is exactly the thing that made Garrett so desperate to please him from the moment he laid eyes on him.

“She’s always been like this, you know,” Garrett whispers, loudly, to him. He stills to listen, so Garrett leans in a little closer and continues, “Trying to shout her way through everything. She made all the boys cry in school and no one asked her to the dances, so so sad.”

Garrett catches the ghost of a smirk on his lips. Marian sends him a flat stare that is, cooly, fratricidal. A double win.

Marian is telling him to stop derailing to séance “or so help her” when Bethany says “look” and the planchette, abruptly, slides to the “I.”

Garrett reaches his/Anders’s hand back and tilts Varric’s camera toward the board. Marian’s eyes have lit up like silver sonic warheads, and even the skeptic on Garrett’s right has quirked an intrigued eyebrow, but Garrett knows better than to feel anything but grim anticipation. Yes, he’s seen the dark end of a Ouija caper. Indeed, he lives with the consequences every single day—Indeed, he can only pray that his wayward sister doesn’t inflict that terrible suffering on these poor ignorant saps, even if it would be oh so satisfying to see her effect her own downfall that way.

Marian lets the planchette guide her over the board. Gradually, as Anders spells aloud, the ghost tells them:

I A-M J-U-S-T-I

Marian frowns and the planchette wriggles ineffectively. “It’s confused.”

“That’s almost Justin,” Bethany suggests.

“Justin!” Marian cries. “Are you the one terrorizing this home?”

Rapidly:

N-O N-O N-O

“Alright,” Marian says, disappointed. “Who the hell are you, then?”

Garrett taps the table. “Beth, could this be the presence you sensed in the bedroom?”

Thankfully, no one seems to notice his name slip-up. Bethany shakes her head. “This presence isn’t sad. It’s…”

I-N-D-I-G-N-A-N-T

“Indignant,” she agrees.

Garrett whistles. “Three ghosts haunting one two-bedroom apartment. The Caesar salad must be _to die for_.”

Fenris takes a deep breath and exhales. Okay, that was a weak joke, fair.

W-R-O-N-G

“What’s wrong?” Beth asks.

N-O N-O

T-R-E-S-P-A-S-S

“Yes,” Marian says. “You are trespassing here.”

N-O-N-O-N-O-N

Y-O-U S-U-F-F-E-R W-R-O-N-G-E-D

H-E M-U-S-T G-O

“Then go, Justin! And take your friends with you!”

The planchette goes wild.

Anders laughs and breaks the hand-holding circle to wipe at his brow. “Is anyone else’s heart just racing? What a rush! Wow.” He fidgets on his pillow and his knees knock against the underside of the coffee table.

Bethany nudges at Marian, but Marian is too occupied with the board.

“Words!” She commands. “Use your words!”

Surreptitiously, Garrett turns the camera towards Anders.

He looks out for his own first, you know?

Fenris rests his forehead on the table; Bethany tugs at Marian’s sleeve.

L-I-S-T-E-N L-I-S-T-E-N

Marian laughs. “You are _not_ in charge here. If you aren’t the poltergeist, I’m not interested in talking to you. Leave the board.”

Alphabet soup.

Anders rubs at his eyes. “Wow _wow._ That’s a sensation, alright.”

Bethany puts her hands on her head. “Look at this!” She jostles Anders by the shoulder; he lets himself be jostled. “His aura’s changing color, Marian—both of them are turning blue! Blue as your eyes, or the Gulf of Mexico!”

And indeed, as decidedly un-sensitive as Garrett is, even he can detect the cerulean halos cresting over the heads of the men on either side of him; and indeed, as decidedly disinvested as Garrett is, he’s getting a little concerned.

He gropes around under the table a moment before he finds the full-spectrum camcorder he stashed there while Marian wasn’t looking. He presses _record_ , and his anxiety is somewhat assuaged. Whatever happens to these men, at least he’ll have proof.

“I—“ Anders says, and boy, he does not sound good. “I—I’m really, wow—“

Fenris, who had been mumbling something that sounded like verse poetry, goes silent. His hands, under the table, are ghostly white. Inexplicably, the lights flicker—

Good God, this poltergeist understands electrical engineering—

“Spirit,” Marian begins, and via twin ESP he senses her growing alarm. “I hereby banish you—“

“ _No!_ ” Anders (or-possibly-not), his voice remarkably resonant, slams his hands down on the floor and snaps straight and, ooh, you can really see the blue radiating out of his eyes and skin on the full-spectrum video. Ooh, this is bad.

“Listen to _me_ now, mortal!”

Oh shit, he used the “M” word.

“I was drawn here by your call! I witnessed the terror this creature wreaked! And I will not stand for it! This man—“ He presses a hand to Anders’s chest. “—Nearly died of terror!”

“That’s because you were scaring him,” Bethany says gently.

“What? No, aren’t you listening? It was not _I_ who shattered that glass, or toyed with the light, or drew blood! ‘Twas not _I_!”

‘Twas? Please don’t be another revolutionary war vet, Garrett prays.

Justin points over the board to Fenris, who has propped his cheek against his arm and is blinking listlessly up at Justin. His eyes are the color of wine bottles, and glassy in the same fashion.

“It is _him!_ ”

Lightning!

Fenris lifts his head to sneer, and as an arc of cerulean spiders over Garrett’s camera screen, the board begins to shake on the table, the drawers of the TV stand rattle, and a clattering and clinking in the kitchenette crescendos to crashing and shattering. Justin jerks Anders’s head back, as if slapped, and shuts his eyes as his aura fades.

A candle falls and sputters on the laminate tile, and Fenris turns to Marian. “Make him stop this!”

“I don’t think he’s doing it.” Garrett turns his camera back on Justin as the spirit gets to Anders’s feet.

“That creature,” Justin says, and as the energy shifts flow away from Fenris, back to him, his voice sounds less and less like something Anders’s vocal chords should be able to produce. “Came to this place only to sow pain and seek vengeance upon the living! I will not stand for it!”

Bethany gets out her phone and starts texting. Apathetic much?

Garrett doesn’t have time to wonder about her. Fenris says, his voice shaky, “This is ridiculous,” and tries to get to his feet but sways to one side as soon as he gets to one knee. Marian holds him up by one studded leather shoulder, and her eyes meet Garrett’s.

Immediately, he understands her plan. Twin ESP.

He hesitates, unwilling to cooperate with his sister in any way. Justin says “mortals!” again and Marian wrinkles her nose, which Garrett understands on a primal level to mean _pretty pretty please._

He sets down his camera and raises his hand. “Excuse me, Justin?”

Justin stops mid-shout and blinks, disoriented.

“Justin, may I go get a glass of water?”

He furrows Anders’s brow. “I suppose you do require hydration. Yes. That is good and right, go get your glass of water, mortal.”

“Thank you, Justin.” Garrett stands, and Fenris gapes at him.

“Now, Justin,” Marian says with uncharacteristic patience as Garrett turns on the tap. The lights flutter, almost lethargic. “You can’t just go around accusing someone of being dead. Is that what you’re saying? That Fenris is a ghost?”

“He is not of this world.”

“I’m of Greensboro.”

Surreptitiously, Garrett reaches over the counter into the side pocket of his suitcase.

“Look,” Marian says, and raises Fenris’s arm by one bloodless wrist. “I’m touching him corporeally. He has bones.”

Justin leans down and touches Bethany’s shoulder with one of Anders’s hands. Bethany continues texting; Marian narrows her eyes.

\--Which then dart to Garrett, who tugs his ear. She nods, and while Justin is distracted by Fenris laughing and saying, “You think I’m possessed now?” Marian slips a tiny red watergun out of her shirtpocket.

Hands behind his back, Garrett approaches Justin.

“Justin!” Marian cries, and shoots holy water in Anders’s face.

Justin throws Anders’s hands over his eyes, and Garrett springs to grab him by the wrists, wrench his hands behind him, and snap on the handcuffs.

He only gets one cuff secured before he’s given a shock that feels at once like his bones being used as piano keys, like the time he tried to burn lighter fluid on his hand but actually just burned his hand, and like the time he broke six bones in his hand trying to break a board in two. It’s not nearly as bad a shock as the time he tried to hook an EMF meter up to his van to build a Mystery Machine.

Garrett lurches back and Marian leaps forward, yanks Justin onto the coffee table, and drags him two feet to the foot of the corduroy couch, where she snaps the second cuff in place.

Justin roars.

Marian crab-walks back.

Garrett clutches his hand, and the door bursts open.

Varric, half-buttoned pink shirt aflutter and pinstripe suitjacket awry, storms in, his crossbow locked and loaded in his arms. “Haunt this, you cockroaches!”

Garrett holds up his good hand. “No, Varric—“

Marian falls to one elbow. “—You can’t shoot a ghost!”

A wild laugh, and arrow pierces the drywall. Fenris swears and drops to the ground; Garrett thinks this is a good idea and follows him. Another _pock, crunch,_ and another. Justin roars, “Chaos!”

A coffee cup launches at Varric and crashes into the hall when he ducks; he shouts, “Had enough of Bianca yet, you ghosty sons of bitches?”

Bethany, holding the Ouija board in front of her like a shield, takes a cautious step over Garrett, towards Varric. “Varric, it’s okay. I’m okay, we handled it.”

Coming down fast, Varric lowers his crossbow. Breathing heavily, he looks at the wrecked kitchenette to his right. “You sure, Sunshine?”

“Yes, Anders got possessed, but we cuffed him to the couch.”

“Ah, alright, then.” He eyes Justin, who has grown distracted by Anders’s foot—specifically, that the toes wiggle—then makes a face at the three bolts in the wall. “I can pay for that,” he tells Fenris.

Garrett, still on the tile, rolls to his side and looks up at Bethany. Six feet above him, she cringes down. “I emergency-dialed him,” she confesses.

“That was good thinking and I’m proud of you,” Garrett reassures her. Varric takes a self-conscious little bow.

Justin kicks at Marian’s shin and blinks when Marian brings the heel of her loafer down on Anders’s knee, possibly snapping it, Garrett isn’t sure. After a delay, he screams. Marian digs her nails into the bridge of her nose. “Stop yelling, everyone, Christ! Someone’s gonna call the goddamn cops!”

Four minutes later, there is a knock at the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> put all the characters in a nine hundred square foot apartment, he said. it'll be great, he said.


	5. Weapons of Clairvoyance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> super brief misgendering in this chapter, also cops. This is the dumbest chapter.

Carver hates his family.

He’s in the patrol car with Capt. Rutherford when they get called to investigate a disturbance at Aveline’s apartment complex, which is when Carver knows it’s his fucking family. It could, conceivably, be some kind of domestic disturbance completely unrelated to Marian and Garrett and their fucking lifestyle—But of course, it isn’t.

A short man with white hair, face tattoos and a leather jacket answers the door. He’s in a cold sweat and his eyes are bloodshot, so Carver’s first guess is: Marian has a new dealer.

An even shorter man with a crossbow steps into the doorway beside him and says, “Right off the bat, I just want to let you gentlemen know I have a license for this. Ah, Carver.” He nods up to Carver. “You can vouch for Bianca, right, little Hawke?”

Capt. Rutherford, the bags under his eyes somehow already a deeper shade of purple, gazes over the dealer’s bleached head into the apartment.

Garrett is standing shirtless in the middle of the room, running an EMF scanner up his right arm and chest. He pauses to secure the scanner between his chin and collarbone, then takes the sharpie marker out of his mouth to scribble numbers onto his stomach. Still getting it waxed, Carver notes dimly. Wonder if Merrill still does it for him in her basement every two weeks, or if Marian living there now precludes that and Garrett is really shelling out a hundred bucks at a salon every month to remain “soft n’ smooth like ol’ Michelangelo liked ‘em.”

Marian is crouching next to a man laying on the floor, and Carver can see the flash of a lighter in her hand, which she holds to the cigar that hangs limply from the man’s mouth.

“Justin,” Carver can hear her whisper. “If you calm down and give Anders his body back, I promise that when the cops leave we can kill Fenris.”

He nods, puffing sluggishly.

“Then, we can eat his corpse.”

“No, no,” the man murmurs. “I only want punishment for crime, that’s all I want… This corporeal realm is so gruesome…”

The man is handcuffed to the couch’s foot. He looks mugged. He’s definitely drugged.

There are three arrows pocketed in the far wall, the TV is flat on its face in a mosaic of broken glass on the floor, and Carver can see most of the cabinets gaping open in the kitchen, glasses and plates in pieces everywhere. Somewhere in the back of the apartment a cat is howling wildly.

Bethany, whose scarf is wrapped around her face, gives him a little wave. He raises his hand back to her, very quickly. God, he hates it when work and family mix.

The dealer smiles down at Varric. “So, the local law enforcement is family, too? Why am I surprised, I wonder?”

Capt. Rutherford smiles vacantly at the scene ahead of him. “Hawke and Hawke, Paranormal Investigators, back at it again. Why am I not surprised?”

Garrett drops his sharpie at the sound of Cullen’s voice. His pupils restrict to pinpricks.

Marian scurries off the floor, and she flips her hair as she smoothes her shirt down and grins at Cullen. She has spinach in her teeth because she still doesn’t floss. “Dear Rullen Cutherford,” she says—the pet name she’s given him, for reasons best understood only by her, to try and ingratiate herself to him. “Fancy meeting you here, you… Imperialist stallion. Are you on a manhunt? Going door-to-door, warning of the rogue hitman prowling these Kirkwall streets and the league of Spanish Mafiosos hunting him?”

“No, Miss Hawke. I am responding to a noise complaint.” He cocks his head. “Would you have any idea what that’s about?”

Garrett is still frozen, his EMF meter beeping like the heartrate monitor of a hypochondriac in the ER with his first panic attack. This is probably because he’s not supposed to be in possession of fireworks for another six months by court order but has like, twelve boxes of them in his van anyway.

Marian sets her hands on her hips and cocks her head in mimic of the Captain. “No, no,” she says. “We’ve just been having a Bible study here, very quiet.”

“A Bible study.”

“Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow,” Face Tattoos murmurs, and yawns. Somehow Carver has it in him to find this depressing.

“I’m an ordained minister, you know, Rullen. Five times over.”

“And you are not allowed within one hundred yards of any priest in this diocese.”

“With the notable exception of the Reverend Vael, who still has hope for my filthy soul!”

“Yes.” Captain Rutherford watches man in handcuffs cough around his cigar, and he sighs. He turns to Carver. “Any insight, Hawke?”

“Where these two are concerned? None, sir.”

“Who is the owner of this residence?”

Face Tattoos glances back at Handcuffs. “I am.”

Cullen silences his radio. “May we step inside, ma’am?” the Captain asks, and Carver cringes.

“Sir,” Face Tattoos corrects.

Capt. Rutherford nods. “My apologies.”

Carver always forgets that most people do not pick up on gender signals as easily as he’s learned to, and that most people do not avoid saying things like “ma’am” to strangers. He glances at his twin: she’s tensed up, and Carver determines to deflect any attention away from her until the Captain resolves whatever _issue_ Marian and Garrett have cooked up this time and they can leave.

“Sir,” Cullen says. “Care to let us in?”

Face Tattoos looks him up and down. “I see no warrant.”

“Indeed, but I believe I have probable cause. If you’ll step aside.”

He pulls on a tight smile. “If that’s how it is to be.” He steps aside.

Carver does not cringe at this manipulation of Face Tattoos’s constitutional rights because Carver is too used to it. God, he hates his job.

Garrett has dropped his EMF meter to the ground and is now wrestling his shirt back on; Varric, ambling along at the Captain’s side, is explaining the “rough and exposed” new interior décor trend and how he’s been exploring it with this triple-punctured wall. Cullen squats down and lifts a stray planchette off the floor with his thumb and pointer finger.

“I was under the impression that Hawke & Hawke were now ‘Ouija-Free.’”

“Yes, yes, but Hawke & Hawke didn’t do that, we brought in a consultant. Not false advertising at all, you see.”

Carver walks to the couch; a coffee-damaged paperback crinkles under his boot.

The man on the ground looks up at Carver and taps his ashes onto the laminate tile. His hair is pulled back in a fraying bun, his aquiline nose is slightly swollen, his face is bruised under one eye, there’s a huge wet coffee stain down his sweatshirt, and his handcuffs rattle when he tugs at the ace bandage around his knee. He rolls the cigar between two long, knobby fingers. Half-heartedly, in a battered voice, he says, “Hey there, uh… stud.”

God, god, why does this always happen? Why did Carver quit the ghost hunting business if he was just going to keep getting dragged back in like he was still fucking six, unable to doggy paddle out of the high tide’s grip and gurgling salt water while Marian tries to hold him above water and Garrett tries to dunk him under? Dad had to wade in and beat them off of Carver, but now Dad is dead, and the tide keeps rolling. Why does Garrett have handcuffs in his ghost hunting kit, please please please don’t let that mean he wasn’t joking when he said it doubled as his “overnight kit, if you know what I’m saying, because the two often go together if you know what I’m saying.”

Kirkwall, Florida was ranked America’s third most haunted city in 2014’s _Popular Pseudoscience Annual,_ the last issue of that magazine’s run, a copy of which is framed in the entryway of the South Florida Circle of Metaphysics headquarters, which is located directly adjacent Kirkwall PD’s Gallows Avenue station. This is because KWPD is forced to work very, intimately closely with the Circle of Metaphysics—because half the city’s income depends on the haunted house tours the Circle runs, the PIs the Circle exports all over the county, and the publicity the Circle generates via its various podcasts and weblogs, and the Circle needs police cooperation in half its ventures: whether to isolate a perimeter, escort them onto restricted property, or that time they weirdly went halfsies on a dunktank for charity at the Kirkwall Kumquat Festival. And it’s all very ironic, because until Carver graduated from the police academy, he’d been categorically banned from Circle of Metaphysics property and functions by virtue of having the name Hawke.

This is like, the fifth time he’s had to see his siblings in uniform. Twice he was doing the Circle’s dirty work, but three times his siblings were just breaking the law. By the time this is over it’ll probably be the third time he’s breathalyzed Marian.

Carver gestures down at Handcuffs’s handcuffs. “Did you consent to this?” His voice comes out weak, lifeless.

Handcuffs scratches his chin. “I’m not sure. I don’t disagree with it now that I’m here.”

Cullen’s boots crunch over shattered porcelain in the kitchenette. “Corporal,” he says. “Ask Mister and Miss Hawke to explain what in damnation happened here. Filter out any references to the shades of your ancestors in your report back to me.”

A potshot: Garrett’s eye twitches and Marian fishes their father’s silver cross necklace out of her shirt to plant a kiss on it. Bethany, in the back hallway, slips her thumb under her scarf to chew.

“The power of disbelief can only take you so far, Collin,” Garrett mutters darkly.

“Daddy isn’t even involved here,” Marian says, nose turned up. “You know he doesn’t have the ecto-power to leave home, Captain Cutherford.”

Captain Cutherford—Rutherford is ignoring them, flashing an LED flashlight in Face Tattoos’s eyes and telling him to follow the light.

The cat howls. Carver crosses his arms. “You gonna let that thing out?”

Garrett shakes his head violently and Marian cuts her hand through the air.

“ _No._ ”

“No, cats are the keepers of the veil between worlds, they get _pissed_ when ghosts fuck around.”

“So it’s a ghost hunt.”

Garrett cuts a look to Marian and shakes his head. “No, no.”

Marian furrows her brow, then nods deeply. “Not at all, Carver, no.”

“Mmm-hmm. What exactly am I looking at, then?”

Garrett crosses his arms behind his back and leans back on his heels. Carver takes comfort in the fact that he remains one inch taller than him. After a moment of “well, well, _hmm,”_ with Marian nodding sagely in the background, Garrett claps his hands together and says, “Ah, Carver. Ha-ha, this is a mite embarrassing, but you seem to have walked in on a, ah, ah—“

“Sexual orgy,” Marian supplies.

“Yes! A-ha-ha, you know how those things can get… Voluminous. But, ahem, I don’t really need to explain the man in handcuffs here, do I? You and I used to share a computer, I know you’ve researched these things online, a-ha-ha-ha, Carver.”

“You were having an orgy,” Carver repeats, slowly. “With each other. And Bethany.”

They share an uneasy glance.

“We were tag-teaming it,” Marian tries. “There’s another orgy in the back room.”

A gagging noise, and Bethany runs down the back hall. The bathroom door shuts, the lock clicks.

Garrett shifts. He seems to be in acute pain. “I think that by sexual orgy, we meant drug orgy.”

Marian claps her hands together. “Yes, yes, it was drugs! But, uh, only the legal kind. Alcohol.”

“A wine orgy.”

“A wine tasting!”

“That’s it! Yes, a very respectable wine tasting, but we got a little excited about the clove aromas and began shouting, and throwing some plates because Marian is just so fascinated by Greek culture, you know, and the handcuffs were for a party game. Nothing suspicious.”

“Brother. Sister. Just give me one straight answer: were you actually doing anything illegal?”

Garrett scratches his chin. Marian taps her foot. He hums, she counts on her fingers, they exchange a glance and nod at each other.

“No, no.”

“No, nothing against the law, definitely.”

“Then why are you lying to me?”

Garrett scowls and jabs a finger at Carver’s chest. “Look inside yourself and find the answer, turncoat.”

Marian mumbles vaguely about cutting the kid a break, and Garrett whirls on her.

“ _You’re_ the reason he turned out this way. _You’re_ the reason why Hawke, Hawke, Hawke & Hawke had to print new business cards _twice._ You’re the reason I have three jobs and no cell phone! I don’t want to hear it from you, Marian!”

“You think I quit because Marian quit? Christ, I’m not ten anymore, Garrett, not everything I do is copycat hero worship.”

He crosses his arms and sniffs, like a child. “If you don’t want to be a ghost hunter, you don’t get to hear about the ghosts.”

“Garrett. _Grow up._ Marian. _Get a real job_.”

They roll their eyes in unison.

“My God.” Cullen laughs. “If it isn’t Anders the Cat.”

Handcuffs snorts a cloud of smoke. “If I knew I’d never live down that all-male Tennessee Williams revival festival, I never would’ve done it.” He fiddles with his cigar and chews on his lip. “No, that’s a lie. Playing Maggie in _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_ was the experience of a lifetime and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. Hello, Cullen.”

Cullen is still shaking his head, hands on his hips. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. We went to boarding school together,” he tells Carver, over his shoulder. “I was a prefect. I can’t count how many times I found this old mess exactly like this.” He waves his hand down towards Anders, still beside himself. “Bleeding from the face and smoking on the bathroom floor. Anders, how long’s it been?”

“How many years ago was it that you brought me in for possession and confiscated my Marx-shaped meerschaum pipe?”

“That was about three years after graduation, if memory serves. That makes seven years, now.” Cullen sets a hand on Carver’s shoulder and says, “You see, Hawke, some people never change.”

“Cullen, once I sold you an ounce of catnip for twenty dollars.”

Still smiling in his sleepy, distant way, Cullen nods. “Hawke, hold the fort. I’m going to the car to get a cup, and we’re going to take a sample of Mister Anders’s urine. Search his pockets for me.”

We can’t take his urine here, Carver could say. You know this, Captain, he could say, but he lets Cullen go, pretty confident that he’ll spend ten minutes chuckling to himself about still being one step ahead of “Anders the Cat,”  leaning on the driver’s side door of the patrol car, and calm down by the time he flicks the butt of his cigarette into the bushes outside.

When the front door closes, Carver notices Face Tattoos creeping out of the back hallway, jacket distinctly missing. He must’ve snuck away while Cullen was distracted by the thought of his old school chum’s pee, and now he’s joining Marian and Garrett’s grimly-looking-on huddle by the fallen TV, trying to blend in. The jacket’s where he keeps the pot, Carver decides, and also decides he doesn’t care.

His t-shirt is dripping in sequins and the sleeves are artistically torn off, which gives Carver a pang of nostalgia for the days when he thought Angry, Young and Poor was a cool website.

“You don’t think he’ll look in my van, right?” Garrett says.

“Carver,” Marian says. “You’ve still got a cool, practical mind, don’t you?”

“Sure. Okay. Whatever.”

She points her thumb over her shoulder. “Hawke family confab in the bathroom.”

“Okay, why not,” Carver says, and a minute later he’s stuffed between a toilet and a shower with a crack down the sliding glass door. His twin sister has unraveled her scarf and, the contents of her purse dumped in the sink, is ignoring everyone in favor of reapplying her makeup, with a special emphasis on the eyeliner, “Just in case, Carver, just in case.”

Despite their ostensible estrangement, Garrett and Marian cannot help but exposit at Carver in unison, like Pokémon antagonists.

“In twenty before Christ, Livia designed a matrix—“

“—It’s supposed to let ghosts feed off the living—“

“—But Fenris was using them to feed off a ghost—“

“—The evidence would suggest, anyway—“

“—And a ghost named Justin told us that—“

Together: “Fenris isn’t even alive!”

“And it’s ridiculous!” Marian says.

“But is it really?” Garrett says.

“That’s the question!” Marian agrees.

Carver sits down on the toilet seat and takes out his phone. While Angry Birds boots up, the Elder Hawkes continue:

“Do you think the matrix could’ve… trapped his spirit? When he died, if he died?” Marian plucks the tube of toothpaste from behind the faucet and squeezes a lump onto her finger. “If he really was deceased, that might explain how he could use the matrix to channel energy to himself. There’s nothing in the literature about a living person being able to do that.”

As Marian scrubs at her teeth, Garrett shakes his head and takes the roll of toilet paper from the decorative cat-shaped holder. Rolling it around his hand, tearing it off, and stuffing neatly-folded squares into his pants pocket, then repeating, he says, “Just because Justin’s dead doesn’t mean he has special knowledge. You remember that trickster spirit who tried to tell us he was Lucifer and the reason he rebelled was because the angels were big fascists, then he spirit-touched your butt and left. He had us going for a good six hours, then we felt dumb, because we were.” He drops the almost-empty roll and idly pats his own ass, apparently pleased at the side-benefit of the extra padding. “I mean, it’s Occam’s Razor, right? No one’s studied these ghost glyphs with modern technology, in all likelihood it’s as simple as those causing video anomalies.”

Marian slides the shower door open and spits at the drain. “What if he’s like Bruce Willis and doesn’t know he’s dead?”

Carver snorts. “Drawing from historical precedent, then.”

Garrett, looking over Bethany’s shoulder at himself in the mirror, rustles his hair and ignores Carver. “No, I touched his arm, too. He definitely has bones.”

Marian takes a bottle of Dove for Men body wash out of the shower and sniffs it before tossing it back in. She wrinkles her nose. “…Could he be a corpse?”

“You mean possessed, like Justin said?”

“Yes, but not like Justin, in that there’s no one in there with him.”

Garrett makes a face. “Why?”

“A guess?” Marian shrugs.

Garrett scoffs. “How scientific. Isn’t a spirit possessing an otherwise empty body just a normal person?”

“I’m the theologian here, Garrett, don’t strain yourself with these big questions. If he doesn’t have a pulse, he’s not a normal person, he’s a corpse, and if he’s a corpse, he’s a ghost. It’s that simple.” She plucks a black hairtie off the bathroom floor and gathers her hair back, with a flourish which she thinks is sassy but actually just makes her look like she got something in her eye—And oh, yeah, she’s blinking, eyes watering, there’s a hair in her eye now. She tries to get that out, and Garrett takes an unwrapped mint which Carver just has to _hope_ originated from Bethany’s purse out of the sink and pops it into his mouth.

“I mean—“ Garrett exhales, frustrated. “There are so many other possible explanations.”

Marian, mascara smeared down one side of her face, taps her nose. “Then we have only one course of action.”

Garrett strokes his beard. “Holmes our way through it and eliminate the impossible.”

Marian smiles. “I knew buying you those Basil Rathbone DVDs would pay off. Let’s investigate, brother.”

Carver, elbows on his knees, ass on the toilet, finally locks his phone. “You want my cool, practical opinion?”

The Elder Hawkes blink. Garrett crunches his mint contemplatively, then nods at Carver.

Carver stands. “You’re both insane. You two leapt to so many conclusions just now, your line of reasoning is fucking dotted.”

Garrett takes a deep breath. “You’re probably right.” He nods. “Absolutely dotted, not scientific at all.”

“We had to at least entertain the idea,” Marian asserts.

Garrett nods harder. “Yes, yes, we did. Had to debunk it, after all.”

“And if you ask me, we haven’t properly debunked it at all.”

“You know, you’re right, sister. That’s the ghost hunter’s motto, after all—“

Together: “Paranormal until proven normal.”

“We definitely haven’t proven Fenris normal.”

After a hesitant moment of squinting at one another, Garrett holds his wrist out, and Marian sets hers against it.

“Prepare for trouble?”

“And make it—“

Carver spits on the floor, which gives them pause. “You feed off each other, you’re a closed circuit, and it’s sick. And _that’s_ why I quit.”

Bethany, mascara wand in hand, cringes at Carver in the mirror as he passes. For her sake, he doesn’t slam the bathroom door on his way out.

“Are you going?” she says, and Carver stops long enough to say “yeah.”

“I’m going to go downstairs and tell Aveline that she’ll never guess who was making all that noise, and then I’m going to listen to her guess on the first try, and then I’m going back to the station. Tell them to keep it down so I don’t have to come back, please?”

“ _Aveline_?”

“This is _Aveline’s_ complex?” Marian climbs into the shower, and Carver hears the window grinding against the frame as she forces it open and sticks her head out. “Shit. I knew I was feeling some déjà vu, but I thought I just astral projected here the other night and forgot about it.”

Garrett makes a disgusted noise. “Aveline invited you to her new place?”

“Yes, because I haven’t completely alienated her, unlike some people.”

A pause. “I can’t believe Aveline called the cops on me again.’

Carver leaves. In the living room, Face Tattoos is holding the pack of Swisher Sweets just out of Handcuffs’s reach while Handcuffs grasps at them and cusses Face Tattoos out. They freeze when they see Carver, and Carver pauses long enough to tell them, “Run.”

When he leaves Aveline’s apartment ten minutes later, Captain Rutherford is leaning against the patrol car, chuckling to himself with one cigarette butt between his fingers and one at his feet.

When they’re back on the road, Cullen says, “It’s calls like that that really make you question your decision to join the force. You’re always so patient with them, Hawke, I don’t know how you do it.”

Carver holds down his window button and watches the glass’s slow crawl into the door. When he can feel the hot highway wind on his elbow, he glares out at the rolling Florida clouds. Rolling free, over the eight lane highway, over the marshland and the ranchland to the sea, where all the ghosts are a thousand leagues below and there is no law. “That’s my secret, Captain. I always hate my job.”


	6. Tarttish Behavior

The ghosts begin acting up again the second the cops leave. This is a ghost’s nature, and Marian cannot blame them for it.

“The power of disbelief silences them,” Fenris says from the crevice of the couch. He’s nestled deep between the cushions, flat on his back in a neck-aching kind of way, with the pack of cigars between his toes. He’s still sort of distractedly dangling them in front of Anders, but it seems that the six Ativan Marian fed him have finally kicked in, because Anders’s heavy blinking has ceased and he makes a noise that is either a snore or saliva choking. For convenience’s sake, Marian assumes snore.

The poltergeist is idly flicking the blinds open-shut, and Marian thinks it must be tired after chucking that lit tower candle at poor defenseless Anders, whose sweatshirt now has a charred hole just over the left nipple which Marian refuses not to find sexy.

Marian tosses the flannel shirt she found in a laundry basket over her shoulder in the style of a scarf, so that she might reject the ghost’s cold, which has dropped to 53 degrees by Garrett’s last measure, and throws herself onto the couch beside her future gothic paramour. He sneers and visibly prickles, but does not remove himself from his cushion crack. It warms Marian in a way an improvised, musk-smelling scarf never could.

“Is that your opinion as a primary source?” she asks him, and he closes his eyes.

“Am I really going to have to prove to you that I’m alive?”

“No, no,” Marian says quickly. She cuts a look to Garrett, who is testing the laser grid and camera he’s set up in the kitchenette—the site of much broken glass, where he anticipates the highest likelihood of physical disturbance. He seems distracted. Time to cheat on the plan they made, Marian decides, and subtly, Marian makes grabby hands over Fenris’s wrist.

“Let me touch you, Fenris.”

He recoils. “No?”

“Just to feel your blood, in your veins.”

“No. What? No.”

Marian frowns, sure that she could’ve phrased that better but not sure how. She lowers her grabby hands and settles herself back into the corduroy. “That’s fine,” she lies. “But I _am_ curious how you came about this opinion of yours, that supernatural phenomena are affected by disbelief.”

“You think I’m wrong?”

“Not at all. That’s the very reason I never cooperate with the law during my investigations and have been charged with trespassing twenty-eight times.”

He hums. “You said they feed off fear, but that’s missing the point. The power is in belief.” He drops the cigar box and lowers his tattooed foot to the postmodernist patterned rug. His head, he turns toward the flicking blinds, away from Marian. “You mean that you want to know where I got my education, so to speak.”

“Precisely.”

His pretty green eyes ramble about the room a moment, touching upon the various exits as one might touch upon a lucky stone or religious necklace, but he surprises Marian by answering. “You got yours at home, I understand.”

Marian smiles and brings Daddy’s necklace to her lips. “Yes.”

“So did I,” he grumbles, and heaves forward to his feet.

Marian shivers. _God_ does that vague Byronic shit rev her engines, ooh!

Marian loves Byron, and Marian loves ghosts. More accurately: Marian loves to beat up ghosts and break spirits’ spirits, which is why she was totally unprepared for this apartment and Fenris. These ghosts are unusually well-fed and simply too strong for her: Marian may have been a karate blackbelt in high school, one full year ahead of Garrett, but she knew better than to try and shake down one of the basketball kids for chicken nugget money. They were simply too damn tall to take on—just like these ghosts.

That’s why she’s sending Garrett out with Little Mister Ecto-Chow. Her brother will feel important, retrieving the “grimoire of our father” containing the arcane “Litany of Adralla,” which Marian is pretty sure is something she made up, and the ghosts’ source of power will be out of the house. Garrett will, in the meantime, conduct a covert interview and try to determine whether or not Fenris is dead— _Even if you have to touch his butt to do it,_ they agreed, complete with a spit-shake. Yes, she is gambling her sexy future with Fenris by sending him on a sexy roadtrip with her brother, but she feels that the bet is safe. Even if Garrett’s seduction tactics have advanced past taking his shirt off and waiting for someone to hit on him, she and Fenris have a _connection._ Yes… They’ll always have Beethoven.

Is there a way to accomplish this without deception? Possibly. Marian doesn’t care enough to find out.

Fenris, completely lacking self-consciousness or fear of flying objects, takes a thirty-pound weight out of the towel closet in the hall and begins curling, as if this is simply what he does in his idle moments. Marian stares until she realizes that Garrett is staring, too.

“Brother,” she snaps.

“Hmm?” he says, ogling.

“Is your surveillance prepared?”

He furrows his brow and shakes his head. He looks down at the tripod. A light goes off. “Oh, yes! Yes, the surveillance is all prepared, ready to go.”

“Which means _you’re_ ready to go, yes?”

“Where is he going?” Fenris sets his weight down on an end table; Marian keeps an eye on it.

Garrett smiles brightly. “I’m going on an adventure. An adventure in a basement. Ride along with me, Fenris.”

Fenris narrows his eyes, and with a snort Marian realizes he’s trying to decide whether or not that’s some kind of euphemism.

Garrett realizes it at the same time, she sees by the sudden widening of his eyes. A moment’s hesitation: he’s deciding whether or not he wants to _make_ it euphemism. Yes? No, no. Bad call, play it innocent, he’s thinking, and his fingers twitch at his side but he represses the instinct to take his shirt off. He tosses his ghosthunting jacket over one shoulder and tilts his head toward the door. “I’m going to fetch the grimoire of my father so that we can use the arcane exorcism spell written within. It’s so occult that you can’t even memorize it, it has to be read directly from the paper. Crazy, right? You should tag along.” He bats his eyelashes which, identical to Marian’s, are show-stoppingly long. “I feel like getting out of here will be good for your health.”

Fenris glances at Anders and Anders’s drool trail, an uneasy set to his mouth. Through their special bond, Marian reads his thoughts: _If I go, who will stop your friends from cleaning the place out?_ “…I can’t think of any good objection,” he says.

So polite!

The boys take off. Goodbye, boys. The bathroom door opens, and in a fog of powder and perfume, Bethany exits. Her eyeliner is so good it makes Marian want to die. Varric has his crossbow in his arm and his camera in his hand, and together, they stand over the sleeping man. Marian lays a benevolent hand on his blond head.

“What’re you gonna do to him… Marian…” Varric says, camera up.

Marian drums her fingers on his delicate skull. “Nothing, yet. Of course, we will try and get that spirit out of him. But first, we must ask it more questions.”

“Justin didn’t seem very cooperative,” Bethany says.

Marian sniffs, combing through a little tangle in Anders’s hair. In his sleep, the man whimpers.

“You see, that’s the thing about Justin. His willpower is very strong, yes, but now that he’s trapped in Anders’s frail little body, he’s very easy to overpower. All we have to do is smack ‘im around a little, you know… maybe break out the thumbscrews.”

On a whim, she plucks a hair out of his head. Bethany, protective of her young teaching assistant, makes a face. Marian ties the follicle around one finger, a razor-thin rose gold ring. Yes… time will prove this to be a good choice. She can feel it.

“You have his DNA,” Varric notes grimly. Marian nods. Bethany smacks her hand off Anders’s head, and Anders snores.

Marian tosses her hair. “Yes, but he’s sleeping now, and I think we should let him. That will give us just the time we need to speak with Aveline.” Near the front door, there is a dry-erase calendar. Marian strides to it now, swipes the white sleeve of her blouse over it, uncaps a red pen and on the smeared, cellblocked surface writes:

_ The Suspects _

“To exorcise a poltergeist,” she says. “You have to understand a poltergeist. This one is here for a reason, and that reason is a person.”

She writes:

 **_Fenris –_ ** _a charming and virile young man with a past shrouded in mystery, his mystical markings are CERTAINLY feeding the phenomena… But did he carry the spirits in? IS HE a spirit HIMSELF?_

**_Anders –_ **

“Anders?” Bethany shakes her head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. He hired us.”

Marian holds up an elegant, hangnailed pianist’s finger. “But he also got possessed within ten minutes of opening the Ouija channel. Odd, hmm? Unless he’s a powerful, _sensitive_ sensitive.”

Bethany’s hand flutters over her heart, and a blush like cherry blossom petals paints her face. She’s always wanted a psychic boyfriend.

“But that means he could’ve been interacting with ghosts,” Varric intuits.

“Yes, and he may not have even realized.” Marian presses the marker tip back to the board; ink foams, like blood.

 **_Anders –_ ** _a sexy blond. Though he made the call for help, he is undoubtedly a powerful sensitive. ALWAYS A SUSPICIOUS TRAIT._

**_Marianne Hawke –_ **

_“Marian Hawke_?” Varric exclaims.

“That’s not how your name’s spelled,” Bethany says.

“Yes it is,” Marian corrects. “Ever since I heard that Leonard Cohen song on the radio on the drive over and remembered how much I love it.”

“How in the hickity heck are you a suspect?” Varric asks, and Marian tosses her head back and laughs.

“Elementary, my dear Tethras.” On the whiteboard, Marian write a date:

**_Feb. 28, 2016 anno domini_ **

She stabs at the board for emphasis; the marker tip frays. “The date Fenris moved in, according to Bethany’s records, which I perused on her Samsung smart tablet while she was occupied with her contour kit.”

Bethany makes a disgusted noise. “You guessed my passcode?”

“1998, the year _Practical Magic_ premiered in theaters. It’s our sister movie, Beth, how could I _not_ guess?”

Bethany _aws_ and backs down.

Marian stabs at the date with the marker once more. “This day, February 28, 2016 anno domini, is also the day I tried to raise Wesley Vallen’s spirit from the dead.”

“I have a closeup on you now, Hawke, just an FYI.”

Marian looks directly into the lens. She is nothing if not a supporter of the dramatic arts.

Bethany exhales and runs her hands through her hair discontentedly. “ _Marian…_ That’s, like…”

“Unethical?”

“ _Really_ unethical. _Marian…”_ Beth flops down onto the couch, head in her hands. _“_ Aveline, really, really didn’t need that. You did that? _Marian…. Ugh._ ”

“You’ll be happy to know that we weren’t successful.” Marian rubs at an itch under her eye which is bothering her, and though she feels the wet nose of the dry erase marker on her nose, she doesn’t care. “He is, apparently, just as happy by God’s side as he always said he’d be. He had no desire to leave, even just to visit his wife.”

Marian can see Beth’s frown in her sad brown eyes. “Are you really going to judge Wesley for how he handles his own afterlife?”

Marian sniffs. “I don’t like to see Aveline cry.”

Bethany sighs. Varric clears his throat and fiddles with his camera.

Moving on, Marian thinks, and she writes bullet points on the whiteboard as she says, “At Aveline’s request, we began the séance as cleanly as possible. I drew from Wesley’s urn, his combat helmet, his favorite shirt and so on and tried to channel him through my own body. Difficult for anyone who isn’t Anders, as you know, but I’ve done it before. However, as I said, Wesley was unresponsive. So, I used Avernus’s method—“

“ _No._ ”

“—Made a little cut on me, a little cut on Aveline, drew a pentagram or two, and I sundered the veil so I could tear the bastard out to this side myself. I didn’t get to Wesley, but I very well could have caused the activity we’re seeing here today.”

“ _Could have?_ Marian!”

“We can’t say for sure,” Marian says, tapping her chin with the marker. “I’ve never used a blood spell before, I really have no idea if I was successful or not. Especially when we also have such likely suspects as Anders and Fenris—the process of elimination is a vital step, here. That’s why we need to ask Aveline if she’s noticed any—“

“We need to Skype Merrill,” Bethany says, standing and rushing to her Samsung smart tablet. “If this is because of a blood spell, she might know what’s going on.”

“No, no, Beth—My point is that there are _so_ many possible explanations, so we have to eliminate—“

“To hell with your point, holy shit—Aveline let you use her blood? Holy shit!” The _ding-a-ling_ of the Skype waiting tone trills through the apartment.

Marian rolls her eyes and is about to remind her sister of the first rule of paranormal investigation— _No prudes, normies or buzzkills—_ when Varric holds up a hand. “Wait, listen.” A rustle, a crunching sound. Bethany, brow furrowed, hangs up her call—the _ding-a-ling_ ceases—and drifts into the kitchen.

There, the laser grid is projected, and there, Marian sees a small, hunched form vaguely defined by the disturbances in the grid. A bit of shattered glass slides across the laminate, into the corner by the sink, and Marian sees that much of the glass and porcelain has been swept there. The figure straightens, and with a flash, the grid blinks out—Bethany, just behind the tripod, presses a hand to her mouth as her hair, jacket, and scarf are blown back in a warm rush of air.

“It’s her,” she says, turning to look at Marian. “The ghost from Fenris’s room.”

A moment of silence. Marian can see the smile, pained, in Beth’s eyes. She’s an empath, a skill Marian has never had much aptitude for, and every now and then Marian sees this in her eyes—the love she has for the beings whose echoes she can feel. Marian can only bite her nail and look, with Varric beside her, at the glass.

Varric states the obvious: “She didn’t want us to get cut.”

Marian hears a yawn in the living room. “Who doesn’t want you to get cut?”

Marian rushes to Anders’s side. She falls to her knees. She brushes his hair back and presses the glass of water she’d strategically left on the floor when she fed him the benzos to his lips. Varric snatches the forms he left on the counter and hurries to join her.

“You poor, ravishingly handsome man, you’ve awoken! Is that nasty Justin still bothering you?”

Anders makes a face; water dribbles down his chin in the moment it takes him to wake fully and recognize that he’s not being drowned. Marian removes the glass, wipes his face with her sleeve—he scrunches his face back into his neck and it takes all of Marian’s self control not to giggle and say “meme”—and Varric hovers.

“I… had a dream about him,” Anders says, cautious but also groggy. Eyeing Marian warily, he scootches ever-so-slightly closer to the couch. “Justin, I mean. We talked, I think. He seemed… nice.”

“Did he?” Marian casts a quick glance at Varric; he moves to swoop in, but she holds up a finger: _not yet._

Anders smiles weakly. “I don’t think he’s been alive before. Does that mean he’s an angel?”

Marian hisses. “Something like that.”

Varric swoops. Pressing a packet of forms to Anders’s knees and a pen into his hand, he says, “Blondie, it just hit me—I never had you sign our release forms! I’d hate to see you cut from my little film because of something as—Well, _stupid_ as _liability._ ”

Anders chuckles. “Blondie, I like that. Yeah, no sweat.”

Both Varric and Marian watch with baited breath as he scribbles through the dotted lines. Varric rips the packet out of his hand the second the pen leaves the paper; Marian breathes a sigh of relief. They can do anything they want to him now.

She gives his bandaged knee a firm pat—he winces—and, Aveline completely forgotten, goes to fetch her bag, which had been tossed into the hall while the poltergeist was still feisty. From a hidden pocket, Marian produces the following items: a rubber band, a fork and plate, a spray bottle filled with seltzer, a straw and a sheet of paper.

“We have a few questions for Justin.” She smiles.

Anders blanches.

“And you…” she adds, a light going off. Quickly collecting herself, she throws on her most intimidating scowl and snaps the rubber band against her wrist. “ _Who was in this apartment on the night of February 28?_ ”

Anders stutters, his brow creases. “You—you mean the day Fenris moved in? Just us, I think? Oh, and—“

“ _And?_ ”

“And my friend, Isabela. Well, _our_ friend, I guess. I don’t know how he knows her, but she’s the one who told him I was looking for a roommate. She helped him move his stuff, but—“ Anders sits up, he shakes his head. “You don’t think _Isabela_ could’ve had anything to do with all this, could you?”

Marian says nothing. With grim determination, she removes the marker from her shirtpocket, strides to the whiteboard, and dashes a new name onto the list.

“The second rule of paranormal investigation: leave no stone un-debunked.”

The thirty-pound weight, which Fenris had set down all those minutes ago, jolts forward, rolls off the end table, and smashes into Anders’s foot. He screams, and Varric and Marian share serene smiles. They aren’t liable.

Meanwhile, on the road, Garrett was getting some answers of his own.


	7. Patrick Swayze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *saxophone noises*

_**Meanwhile...** _

Fenris steps into Garrett Hawke’s “Mystery Machine.”

“Step into my Mystery Machine,” he’d told him, and Fenris somehow kept himself from saying that the last time a guy said that to him was just before the most disappointing evening of his junior year.

Yes, there is a bumper sticker that reads “Area 51: Green Since 1947,” and yes, it is painted up in the classic style of Norville “Shaggy” Rogers. There is some kind of amulet hanging from the rearview mirror; when he slides in behind the steering wheel, Garrett Hawke flicks it, the amulet twirling and its bas relief sun flashing in the light, and he says, “This is to ward against death by fire.”

“Okay,” Fenris says.

Garrett drums his fingers against the wheel (the wheel cover is black foam; written around its length in silver fabric marker is the phrase “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE") and taps what appears to be, at first glance, the stereo system. No, the stereo system has been gutted: in its place, various lights, meters, and dials, all cobbled together with wires and bits of electrical tape sticking out the cracks. “This is like a police scanner, but for ghosts. Full-spectrum. There’s no police scanner, though, because that is apparently illegal or at least risky.”

“That’s fine,” Fenris says.

Garrett hums, happy, and turns his key, which dangles from a photo keychain decorated with an English Mastiff’s slobbery face, in the ignition. The van roars to life, and to Fenris’s surprise, it manages to produce the thunderous wail of a saxophone—yes, that is the new Carly Rae Jepsen. Fenris twists around to see what looks like a set of home soundsystem speakers bolted in place in the back. Twisted between the boxes labeled _Phantom Fireworks_ are numerous wires of various colors and girths, various articles of clothing and several empty energy drink cans.

“I took a course on electrical engineering and now the world is my oyster,” Garrett yells over the din. He waves his hand in the air, gesturing to the soundwaves. “This is because I’m gay. You caught that, right?”

“ _No-o-o,_ ” Fenris says. Garrett laughs and the van jerks back, out of the parking space; Fenris secures his seatbelt and settles back, mentally preparing himself for the very real possibility of this vehicle bursting into flames at any moment.

There’s always something nerve-wracking about being in an attractive man’s Mystery Machine.

While they wait for the gates, which _frequently_ break down and force everyone to drive through the grass to get home, reminding everyone just how useless the gates are as anything but a pathetic mimic of a pathetic status symbol, to creak open, the falling sunlight glitters off the pond nearby. The sky is lit by the last of the day, and the light flashes warm on Garrett Hawke while he bobs his head, lipsyncing along with the song.

It’s incredibly unpleasant and terrible to see, so Fenris rolls down his window and look at the dumpster instead. He found a DVD player there, once, just sitting on the ground. It was great.

The gate finishes creaking. The van lurches forward.

“Where are we going, exactly?”

“Mmm. Merrill’s basement, where my sister lives. Finding the grimoire of my father. Not quite my area of expertise, but Marian thinks the litany should do the trick for fixing your roommate. Maybe it’ll fix your poltergeist problem, too! I really don’t know.” He scrunches his face. “Actually, maybe you should wait in the van while I look for it.”

“You dragged me out of my home… So that I could wait in your van?”

He makes a face. “Well, I didn’t really think too hard about, ah, the kind of place Merrill’s house is, you see. For you it’d be like, out of the frying pan and into the fire? I mean, Merrill knows what she’s doing! It’s just… and then there’s _Marian_ living there, now.” He swings his head back and forth. “Oh, yes. I’m sure Marian’s turned that basement into a veritable demon hostel. It’s _her way._ ” He brings the van to a halt at the light and drops his face against the headrest, leveling his brown eyes on Fenris. “You understand the perils of irresponsible mediumship, I feel.”

“Your instinct has not led you astray.”

He taps his nose. “It never does.” Then, as an afterthought, he winks. Bafflingly.

The streetlights, whose shape always remind Fenris of flying saucers—ironically—have turned on in anticipation of the dark, and as they pass under one, it flickers out. Garrett smiles.

“My old man used to say it was a person’s electromagnetic field interfering with the bulb that makes ‘em go out like that. He did it all the time.”

The next light they drive under stays on.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Fenris says. “If that were true, your father would’ve had to short-circuit desk lamps and TVs and anything else that runs on electricity. He wouldn’t have been able to responsibly enter government buildings. He would’ve been an X-Man.”

The next light flicks out.

“No, no, see, it has to do with the specific frequency of the streetlights. Like, sometimes he’d make the ceiling fan turn off, too, but—Listen, hear me out, the X-Men thing actually isn’t that far out—You ever heard of indigo children? Okay, so—“

Another light goes.

Garrett pauses to laugh. “This happens with you a lot?” And the next sparks out. And the next, the next, and the next 5 ahead on either side of the road, the length of the street gone dim.

Hawke pulls over and turns a knob on his ex-stereo, which comes to life with a frantic screech. Fenris opens his door.

He hears the driver’s side door clap shut and the van beep upon locking, and Garrett rushes after him down the sidewalk.

“That doesn’t normally--?”

“It’s never happened before.”

“You think the séance opened something, or--?”

“I don’t know.”

Fenris notices a stray cat slinking along at his heels. Its fur is black and torn away in patches, and it is purring very, very loudly. Another cat silently leaps from a nearby window and trots along beside the first.

“Where are you going?”

Fenris applies critical thought to this question for exactly four seconds, turns around and keeps walking. “Back to the Mystery Machine.”

It takes the cats and Garrett a beat to process and catch up with him, during which time a third stray crosses the street and joins their ranks.

This kind of thing has, actually, happened to him before, but not since he left North Carolina. He’d half convinced himself that North Carolina was simply so close to Hell that one could only expect things like rabid cats and malfunctioning public property, just like, when in Georgia, one must simply expect the Devil to crash one’s backyard barbeque with his fiddle in hand. But the only obvious similarity between today and Greensboro circa 2013 seems to be, in fact, irresponsible mediumship.

“So,” Garrett says. “There must be quite a story behind—“

“There is.” Fenris turns the stereo back on.

This “Merrill’s” home is deep in the suburban sprawl, in a neighborhood Fenris’s mother would have described as “low-rent,” not really speculating at the cost of living.  Manufactured homes, a few horses in the yards, the road switching suddenly to gravel, then dirt as the maze of the residential zone spiraled on, and conveniently located near the food pantry. He supposes it had to be some kind of something, to be a house with a basement in Florida. They very much fell out of vogue all those years ago when people started hearing stories about the men “sucked to death in bed” by sinkholes.

In the front yard, with the white horse whinnying in the pen nearby, Garrett sets his hands on Fenris’s shoulders.

“Listen,” he says. “This place may look friendly. But inside, it’s _fraught_ with paranormal danger.”

“Unhand me,” Fenris says calmly.

Garrett unhands him. “You’re a reader. You use fancy words and phrases in the everyday. I like that.”

Fenris tries not to find this endearing.

Garrett points at the house. A gnome in the parti-colored garden bids them Welcome! “If you really want to venture inside, stay on your toes. But don’t worry too much,” he assures with a wink. “You’ve got a professional here to protect you.”

“Don’t make me swoon.”

Garrett laughs, winks again, finger-guns, stumbles backwards and almost falls when he bangs his Achilles tendons on the first wooden step of the stoop.

The many windchimes chime in the night breeze, and the doorbell plays the Addams Family theme song at the press of Garrett’s thumb. The door opens to reveal a small woman, bopping from foot-to-foot and snapping along to the song.

She’s four foot nine, she’s wearing a flower crown, she’s wearing rainbow kneesocks and sillybands and her shirt says “I’m A Good Witch!!” She sings along to the rest of the song and jabs her thumb over her shoulder. “Should I go heat up the wax?”

“No, no, no… I’ve come on a much more solemn mission today, dearest Merrill, sister of my soul if not my blood… More so than my treacherous blood-sister, for sure…”

Her manicured brow furrows, and she looks past Garrett to Fenris with her head cocked for one long moment before she claps, cups her hand to Garrett’s ear and stands on tip-toe to whisper.

He shakes his head, solemnly. “Not today, Merrill. You know you’ll be the one we call when the time comes, though.”

She pouts. “You’re completely sure? Because—“ She ducks out of sight and reappears a moment later with a scrapbook, comically large in her tiny hands, with a front cover decorated with a series of patterned hearts pasted over one another and trimmed in lace. Written beneath this in flowing cursive is the name _Garrett Atreus Hawke._ “—I have it all planned out, I have the floral arrangements designed and _everything_. This was _almost_ my profession—well, part of it—and I am very, very good at it!”

Fenris has a sinking feeling, deep in his bowels. Carver Hawke's parting advice echoes through his mind: _Run, run, run…_

“I’ve never doubted you, Merrill, but—“

A fake lily is poking out of the binding, and Merrill clenches her small fist around it. “I could have been _great_. I can make _magic_ out of a place setting, and I was getting better at understanding what causes divorces, too! If Marethari wasn’t so— _so—“_

The inside of the house looks like a grandmother’s house. There’s a sewing cabinet. There’s a framed shelf of sea shells. There’s a VHS rack. There are doilies on the armrests, books stacked everywhere, a candy dish, and on a huge cloth pinned to the wall is some kind of chilling mandala painted in that rusty tone anyone could recognize as _old blood_ , but which Fenris—Standing there, of his own volition, due to his own life choices—tells himself must be _something else_. The shear amount of pigment required for a design that size... Incense smokes on a burner shaped like a stag’s head, and when a tiny _ding!_ sounds from the kitchen, Merrill gasps and dashes after it, exclaiming, “Oh, my Easy-Bake Oven!”

Fenris hears a squeak and looks down.

Under the coffee table is a cardboard box filled with tabby kittens.

Garrett Hawke is on his knees, trying to get them to attack his fingers, but every reflective green eye is fixated on Fenris.

“She saw them at the produce stand on the way to the library and put the whole box in the back of her truck. She said it reminded her of the beginning of _Oliver & Company _and she was just blubbering like a baby, imagining them washed away down into the drainage ditch, which is better than a New York City gutter, but still. Some of them have those special paws, you know, the paws Hemmingway did. I’d hide one in my jacket and sneak it out of here, but I’ve got Haley Joel Pawsment to think about, you know. And Pops, of course…”

Stop finding this attractive, Fenris tells himself firmly. This is terrifying, he reminds himself. This is a large blinking sign that reads _TURN BACK NOW._ There is a blood-painting over the kittens and his elderly father is so elderly that he is, in fact, a dead father. Swipe left. Swipe left.

Softly, Garrett Hawke serenades the kittens: “ _So Oliver don’t be scared, though yesterday no one cared…”_

Merrill steps out of the kitchen with a tiny tray balanced on her oven mitt. Fat tears are rolling down her face. “ _So keep your dream alive, dreaming is still how the strong survive—“_

Together: “ _Once upon a time in New York City._ ”

The two of them turn to smile tearfully at Fenris. “You know the song,” Garrett Hawke whispers, vindicated.

Fenris clears his throat. He’d sung along very quietly and was hoping they wouldn’t notice.

“Marethari is a Jewish relationship counselor and part-time wedding planner,” Garrett explains as the two of them descend the narrow, creaking staircase to the basement where his sister lives. Merrill had offered them tiny vanilla wafers and ushered them through a cramped hall, lined with bookshelves lined with dolls, to the muddy backdoor room that holds the washing machine and a door decorated in classic middle-grade style with “KEEP OUT” signs, which led to the basement. She claimed to have “research” to perform, and assured them that she had total trust in them and was not even slightly worried they’d steal anything they weren’t supposed to.

“She was training Merrill to take over the practice, but…”

“The blood magic threw her off?”

“Yes,” Garrett agrees.

There is a welcome mat at the bottom of the stairwell, but someone has written “NOT” at the top of it in red fabric paint. Beside the welcome mat is a puddle, and under the stairs is a trundle bed drowning in faux-fur pillows and blankets. A collage made up entirely of pictures of the same dog from Garrett’s keychain and Marian kissing it hangs on the wall above the bed, and a calendar beside it with entire weeks marked by the promise, _SHE’S MINE NOW._ On the floor, an elaborate ritual circle drawn in pink sidewalk chalk. A punching bag with a photograph of Garrett Hawke taped to it hangs from the ceiling nearby, and a damp area on the far wall sports a bare rusty sink, a toilet without a lid, and a garden hose hooked up near a drain. The rest of the space is filled with cardboard boxes, plastic storage containers, and a large object covered with a white bedsheet.

Fenris reaches out to touch the sheet and Garrett cries, “Get away from that thing!”

Placing himself bodily between it and Fenris, he says, “If you look into this mirror, your subconscious might become trapped in its labyrinth. If that sounds like no big deal to you, _it isn’t._ ”

Fenris raises his hands and backs away, very slowly. Garrett nods grimly.

“Yes, we’re in the lion’s den now. Like that famous old chum Daniel, but God won’t grace us with his big cat tranquilizers here.” He paces, and he sniffs loudly. “You smell that, don’t you?”

Fenris glances back at the wall outlet. “The Glade plug-in?”

“ _Brimstone_.” He removes a device from his thigh holster, flicks it on, and holds it out for Fenris. “What does it read?”

Fenris squints. There are three lights on the device labeled _Safe, Caution, and DANGER_ respectively. “Danger.”

“Exactly.” He maintains his grim stare as he peels back the velcro, holsters the E.L.F. meter, and replaces the velcro. Without warning, he clutches Fenris’s hand. “Fenris,” he says, earnest. “Are you feeling woozy? Bloodless? _Drained_?”

“If I do I will be sure to faint into your capable arms.”

“Please do,” He beseeches. “You could easily concuss yourself by hitting your head on this hard and unforgiving floor.”

He releases Fenris’s hand and strides into the confusion of storage bins. “Yes,” he says, gesturing broadly. “The veil is completely shredded here. Ghosts slipping in and out as casually as you please. I’m sure you sense it, it’s probably tearing you apart just to stand here.”

“I feel fairly refreshed, actually.”

“Oh, hmm,” Garrett says, clearly troubled.

Shaking it off, he tears open the first box he sees. It appears to be full of assorted refrigerator magnets. “Well, Merrill says she binds everything she summons to dolls—She learned this technique in the mirror-demon’s labyrinth, you see—But I thought, well _, hmm_ … If not Merrill, _Marian,_ certainly…”

Immediately Fenris sees a storage bin labeled “Hawke Family Heirlooms.” While Garrett sifts through a box of shoes, Fenris unclips the lid and, underneath a pair of red scarves and a fire-colored crystal ball, finds a well-worn book decorated with an avian design. He takes this and sets it down in front of Garrett, on top of the shoes. Garrett’s eyes light up.

He opens it: written at the center of the first page, in heavy ink, is _Grimoire of Malcolm Hawke, Psychic._ Garrett turns the page: pasted here is a photograph of a blond woman in a hospital bed. Standing at her side is a man in a full three-piece suit with his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, and on the bed, in either of her arms, is a small child: one wears a handmade shirt that says “BIG SISTER” and one wears a handmade shirt that says “BIG BROTHER,” and each of them is holding a newborn infant. One baby sleeps beatifically, and one is red-faced and howling. All of them, except the infants, seem to be glowing with happiness.

In a small script below the picture: _First Full Family Portrait, Feb. 27, 1997. Note orb in top left corner. Bethann???_

Garrett taps the page. “Father always says, ‘The most powerful magic of all is the love of one’s family.’”

“That’s touching,” Fenris says genuinely.

Garrett nods and flips through the pages until he gets to the last one, which is titled “Litany of Adralla.” He smiles and claps the book shut. “Mission accomplished.”

Not giving himself the chance to think better of it, Fenris says, “Do you still want to know how I got my tattoos?”

He tucks the grimoire under one arm and takes a seat on a box marked _TAINTED CRYSTALS – CLEANSE ASAP!_ “I’d love that. You have my undivided attention.”

“Which isn’t intimidating at all.”

“I can divide it, if that helps. I think there’s a Gameboy in one of these boxes, I could start a Pokémon game while you talk.”

Fenris smiles and plucks at the hem of his shirt. “Is being vague the same as backing down?”

“Not at all. Vaguery is my favorite quality in a man.”

Fenris hums. He can’t tell if the banter is helping. “Have you always lived in Kirkwall?”

He shakes his head. “Born in San Juan, but my mother’s from here, so we moved back when our little farming venture fell through. None of us actually knew anything about agriculture, truth be told. Father just liked the idea of living off the grid.”

Fenris traces the design on Malcolm’s grimoire. “In the last few years I’ve been in… Raleigh, Virginia Beach for a few weeks, Spartanburg, Athens, Atlanta, just about everywhere in Mississipi—for some reason—Pensacola, in December, and I came here in February because I took a bus to Tampa but KU was cheaper for an out-of-state student. I didn’t know how long I’d have to live here to qualify as a resident, so I went to Kirkwall.”

“Sounds like you’re running from something.”

“Yes,” Fenris says, and since he feels oddly light-headed he would stop there, enough information divulged to a stranger whose butt he likes for one day, but Garrett Hawke prompts him—

“What are you running from?”

And isn’t that an interesting question? Fenris wanders to the box of magnets and picks one from the heap: a child sits on the planet Earth, which is rocketing, in the style of a popped balloon, into the sun. _Earth – Love it or Lose It!_ “A stalker,” Fenris answers. “Not really, anymore,” he amends. “I think he’s in prison now, unrelated charges. A bad home,” he tries. “I had a bad home and I stayed too long, and that is what I’m running from.”

Fenris knows that what he’s saying isn’t quite true, but he’s not sure what the truth would sound like, here.

“You asked why I got my tattoos if I didn’t want them; that’s why. In short.” He spots a tuft of yellow hair sticking out among the magnets and unburies a Kelly doll. He always preferred the Tommy dolls, himself. “Well, I agreed to them at the time. I wasn’t drugged or held down, or anything. Though I recognize now that what happened was a form of coercion. It was his way of making me more dependent, I think. I can’t find a job now, obviously. Or he could’ve been trying to make me less me, more his—though, that’s probably an exaggeration of intent. The effect was the same.”

This is coming out surprisingly painlessly.

He turns around. Garrett Hawke’s eyes are wide, and a dark shadow is cast over his face. Fenris matches him with a grimace.

“That was a little heavy, wasn’t it?”

“No, no, not at all! Which is to say, it was actually very heavy, but that’s not a bad thing. It makes sense that you’d want to avoid, ah—“ He gestures vaguely at everything around them. “—Stuff.”

“Stuff,” Fenris repeats, and he chuckles. Garrett laughs with him, slightly frantic, which starts a warm feeling spreading through Fenris’s chest like a shot of novocaine spreads through the mouth. For a moment they’re simply smiling at one another, and then Garrett’s mouth quirks down.

“Fenris,” he says, hesitant. “Can I ask you something really, really stupid?”

Fenris stops smiling. “Maybe.”

Garrett cringes, rubbing the back of his neck. “Hmm. Could I, very quickly, just… Check your pulse?”

Fenris considers this for a long moment. A bead of sweat drips down Garrett Hawke’s neck. “…Fine.”

“Really?” He leaps to his feet. Fenris rolls up his sleeve and holds out his wrist; Garrett’s fingers are warm, pressed on his skin. After a moment, he steps back.

“Find what you were looking for?”

Garrett laughs breathlessly. “Marian’s gonna feel real dumb when I tell her.”

“You don’t feel dumb, though.”

He swings his head back and forth, and Fenris, still riding that post-confessional adrenaline high, drags his hand over the lid of the box, the magnets stirring under his fingertips.

Garrett turns white.

“What?”

“Your hand just clipped through that box? Like, it went through the box? Your hand was bisected by cardboard?”

Fenris slides his hands into his jacket pockets. “It didn’t if I believe it didn’t.”

“Fenris… You’re the first person I’ve ever met who makes me feel like a normie.” Despite his jesting tone, he continues to look completely shell-shocked. Fenris is sure he’s beating himself up inside—The _one time_ he didn’t have a camera!

Merrill is running the vacuum when they ascend the stairs (“I was trying to tidy a bit for you,” she admits) and plies them with Swedish Fish all the way out the door—The candy that Fenris despises most. She also tries to foist a Waterbaby doll upon him, as a token of their new friendship (“She’s a very special doll,” Merrill assures him. “She can tell you a lot of things about boats and how not to get shipwrecked during a hurricane. You never know when you’ll need that kind of knowledge!”), but Garrett tactfully snatches the doll and hides it under an armchair while Merrill is distracted by her kittens, and then they are back in the yard with the muddy horse and the Mystery Machine.

Garrett opens Fenris’s door and is on the verge of bowing and he waving him in when, abruptly, something stops him. Certainly not the remembrance of any accepted social norms, or any sense of self-preservation. He tries to lean casually against the side of his van.

“You’re planning on staying in Kirkwall a while, then? Since you enrolled at the college?”

Fenris shrugs. “I’m only enrolled in two classes, I applied as non-degree seeking. I’ll finish them.” Probably.

“Oh,” he says, tone carefully light. “Book classes, then?”

“Yes,” Fenris says simply. “Book classes.” And he hopes that’s the end of it.

But Garrett Hawke cocks his head. For a moment he isn’t there with Fenris, he’s inside himself asking a question. His tongue between his teeth a moment, his eyes track the lines of moonlight running the ground. “Do you think…” He looks up at Fenris then, a small, self-conscious smile. “Do you think you’ll ever find a reason to stick around?”

The unstated thing here makes Fenris uncomfortably warm, another shot of novocaine, and, simultaneously, makes him completely unwilling to get back into the van and ride back to the apartment. Walking will be awkward—he’s already trying to choreograph his retreat, none of the steps look elegant. Also, he’ll have to stay at a hotel until the investigation is over, and who knows how long _that_ will take—It already feels like _over ten weeks—_

This is ridiculous. “Probably not,” Fenris says, and Garrett Hawke still smiles at him. He bows and waves him into the van, and with E•MO•TION turned down low, explains the next step of the investigation.

“Marian has probably been putting Anders and Justin through high-stress interrogation the whole time we’ve been gone,” he says. “So she’ll be ready to exorcise him when we get there. Once he’s fixed, we’ll begin the lockdown.”

“That’s a somewhat dramatic term for what you’ll be doing, isn’t it?”

Garrett Hawke looks Fenris in the eye. He shakes his head.

The van’s overhead light flickers out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you thought I meant the "Careless Whisper" saxophone, didn't you.
> 
> "Sucked to death in bed" is from an NY Daily News headline about a man who died in 2013 not far from where "Kirkwall, FL" is supposed to be. I don't know if what Garrett did with his van is actually something you can do. I might clean this up in the morning but I've been staring at it too long gah.


End file.
